Precision Progress

Hello, hello and welcome back to week 8 of my senior project! Today’s post is going to be a little short, but hopefully pretty informative. Now, as I’ve repeatedly mentioned, autistic people greatly struggle with their executive functioning (I know, here I go again), which is why the primary focus of this study is the improvement of these individuals’ executive functioning (via fine motor skills).

But why fine motor skills? Well, for starters, fine motor skills have been found to contribute to/correlate with higher academic achievement and task performance in neurotypical children. Studies have also found there to be a significant association between fine motor skills and social competence and maturity in children, with fine motor skills as a potential impact factor to improve children’s social growth; a notable symptom, or characteristic, of autism is social skill deficits (difficulties with social communication, interaction, overall functioning, etc…).

Additionally, tactile forms of cognitive remediation (which, if you remember from week 5, is a systematic approach/intervention to teaching individuals to overcome cognitive deficits arising from brain dysfunction) that require physical mobilization of the hands and fingers have been described with positive results with regard to executive functioning. This further suggests that the use of fine motor skills may benefit the improvement of both social and non-social cognition for autistic people.

Ultimately, given the need for more literature on the link between fine motor skills and executive functions, more specifically in relation to Autism Spectrum Disorder and adults (with current research predominantly focused on children), it is worthwhile to explore if fine motor skills can help improve the executive functioning of autistic adults, i.e. my project in a nutshell.

“If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.” – Martin Luther