Like Hans Asperger described one autistic boy in his classic text 'Autistic psychopathy in childhood' (1944):
"Even when he was following the group leader's instructions and trying for once to do a particular physical exercise, his movements would be ugly and angular. He was never able to swing with the rhytm of the group. His movements never unfolded naturally and spontaneously - and therefore pleasingly - from the proper co-ordination of the motor system as a whole. Instead, it seemed as if he could only manage to move those muscular parts to which he directed a conscious effort of will. What was true of many of his responses in general was also true here: nothing was spontaneous or natural, everything was 'intellectual'."
"Even when he was following the group leader's instructions and trying for once to do a particular physical exercise, his movements would be ugly and angular. He was never able to swing with the rhytm of the group. His movements never unfolded naturally and spontaneously - and therefore pleasingly - from the proper co-ordination of the motor system as a whole. Instead, it seemed as if he could only manage to move those muscular parts to which he directed a conscious effort of will. What was true of many of his responses in general was also true here: nothing was spontaneous or natural, everything was 'intellectual'."
