Persistent primary reflexes affect motor acts: Potential implications for autism spectrum disorder

Highlights
• In typical development progress in motor and gesture repertoire rely on the inhibition of primitive reflexes, particularly those involving the hand or mouth.

• Children with autism have often difficulty in performing skilled movements and show poor gesture repertoire.

• In 12- to 17-month-old infants we evaluated the relationships between persistence of three primitive reflexes, motor repertoire, and parental autistic-like traits.

• Irrespective of age persistence of primary reflexes influenced infants motor repertoire and correlated with parental autistic-like traits.