Motor skills predict adaptive behavior in autistic children and adolescents

There is a well-documented difference between IQ and adaptive behavior scores in autism, with autistic children having lower adaptive behavior scores than would be predicted based on their IQ scores. Differences in motor skills may explain the variability in their adaptive behavior scores. The current study examined how motor skills might explain autistic individuals’ low adaptive behavior scores and which individual components of IQ (i.e., verbal comprehension and perceptual reasoning) and motor skills (i.e., manual dexterity, aiming and catching, and balance) may drive this effect. We examined the relationships between IQ, motor skills, calibrated severity, and adaptive behavior scores in 45 autistic children and adolescents. We found a significant difference in the full-scale IQ and the adaptive behavior scores indicating that our participants’ adaptive behavior scores were lower than would be expected given their full-scale IQ. We investigated whether motor skills predicted adaptive behavior in autistic children and adolescents and found that motor skills scores were related to adaptive behavior scores. To further investigate these relationships, we examined how individual components of IQ and motor skills predicted adaptive behavior scores in autistic children and adolescents. Our results indicated that manual dexterity scores were related to adaptive behavior scores. These findings clearly illustrate the need for further understanding of autistic individuals’ difficulties with adaptive behavior and the potential role of motor skill difficulties that may underlie these difficulties.