Persistent primary reflexes affect motor acts: Potentialimplications for autism spectrum disorder

In typical motor development progress in use of goal-directed actions and communica-tive gestures depends on the inhibition of several primitive reflexes, especially those thatinvolve the hand or mouth. This study explored the relationship between the persistenceof primitive reflexes that involve the hand or mouth and the motor repertoire in a sampleof 12- to 17-month-old infants. Moreover, since children with Autism Spectrum Disor-ders (ASD) often have difficulty in performing skilled movements and show poor gesturerepertoire, and since ASD represents the upper extreme of a constellation of traits thatmay be continuously distributed in the general population, we investigated the relation-ship between the persistence of primitive reflexes in the same sample of infants and thesubclinical autistic traits measured in their parents. Results revealed that the persistenceof the primitive reflexes correlated with motor repertoire irrespective of infant’s age, and itwas greater among infants whose parents had more subclinical autistic traits. Our findingssuggest that the persistence of primitive reflexes might alter the developmental trajectoryof future motor ability and therefore their evaluation might be an early indicator of atypicaldevelopment.