Hindawi Publishing Corporation Autism Research and Treatment Volume 2012, Article ID 576478, 5 pages doi:10.1155/2012/576478 Clinical Study Gait Symmetry in Children with Autism Victoria L. Chester and Matthew Calhoun Andrew and Marjorie McCain Human Performance Laboratory, Richard J. Currie Center, Faculty of Kinesiology, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada E3B 5A3 Correspondence should be addressed to Victoria L. Chester, vchester@unb.ca Received 6 December 2011; Accepted 21 March 2012 Academic Editor: Klaus-Peter Ossenkopp Copyright © 2012 V. L. Chester and M. Calhoun. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Most studies examining gait asymmetry have focused on infants and toddlers and have tended to use subjective methods of evaluating movement. No previous studies have examined gait symmetry in older children with autism using objective motion capture systems. The purpose of this paper was to quantify gait symmetry in children with autism versus age-matched controls. Fourteen children with autism (N = 14) and twenty-two (N = 22) age, height, and weight-matched controls participated in the study. An eight camera Vicon motion capture system and four Kistler force plates were used to compute temporal- spatial parameters and symmetry indices during walking. Group diﬀerences in these measures were tested using MANOVAs. No signiﬁcant diﬀerences between the autism and control group were found for any of the temporal-spatial measures or symmetry indices. Therefore, results suggest that children with autism demonstrate typical symmetry or interlimb movement during gait. Further research is needed to examine the use of diﬀerent gait inputs to the symmetry indices (e.g., joint angles and moments). A greater awareness of the movement patterns associated with autism may increase our understanding of this disorder and have important implications for treatment planning. 1. Introduction Autism is a developmental disorder that is typically char- acterized by impaired social interactions and communica- tion and restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behaviour [1]. Numerous studies have also found evidence of movement impairments in children with autism. Asymmetry of movements during lying [2–4], righting [3], sitting [2, 5], crawling [2, 3], and standing [6] has been reported during early development. Several studies have also found gait disturbances in children and adults with autism [2, 3, 7–10]. Studies of movement in autism have examined symmetry of movement as an indicator of underlying neurological impairments. Research on movement asymmetries has typi- cally focused on infants and toddlers [3, 11]. Studies of older children and adults with autism have typically described movement impairments but not asymmetry [8, 10, 12–15]. Therefore, it is not known whether movement asymmetries persist with development. Further, most of the above studies on gait symmetry in autism have used observational scales and video analyses. The examination of gait symmetry using motion capture systems may facilitate a more objective anal- ysis of symmetry during gait. The measurement of temporal- spatial data may allow the monitoring of compensations occurring during gait, reﬂecting an underlying neuromuscu- lar impairment. There are several symmetry indices that can be used to assess interlimb diﬀerences during gait [16–18]. However, there is currently no standardized method of computing gait symmetry. Furthermore, the gait parameters used to com- pute the various symmetry indices vary across studies. There- fore, the purpose of this study was to examine diﬀerences in gait symmetry between a group of children with autism versus age-matched controls using six diﬀerent symmetry indices and various temporal-spatial measures. 2. Method 2.1. Participants. The data presented in the study were collected as part of a larger kinematic and kinetic gait study of children with autism [7]. Fourteen children (n = 14) aged 5 to 9 years with autism were recruited to participate in the