Do you have trouble copying movements in reverse?

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What I mean is if you are facing someone who is showing you an exercise or a dance move, can you automatically transfer their right to your left? I can't. Why is that? Once I went to a jazzercise class and actually tripped over my own feet and fell down.

Mimicking moves topic

When you are facing someone move, sometimes it is though you are looking in a mirror, and you have to make the conscious decision to match left with left, and right with right.

I have seen non Autistic people do this, too. the group leader usually verbalizes to move a right body part, or a left. For many Autistics, the hyperfocus and lack of multitasking would mean that you are concentrating on one thing (the actual movement) and not which side of the body was doing the moving (eg the left arm/leg/side).

This is what happens to me.

Very true for me. I have always had this problem, but felt better when most of my archery class reacted the same way to demos. We mostly "got it" when the teacher came around and checked each one of us. It actually helped that I was the only one who shot left-handed, so that all the folks I saw were really mirror images of what I should do. Too much processing required to mentally reverse the image.

I don't have this problem.

I have this problem to such a degree that I have cried in dance and aerobics classes. Part of this I credit to my NLD, however.

I have a horrible horrible time with this...add in the fact that I don't automatically know my left from right and have to pause and think about it every time....exercise classes found me going in reverse of everyone else....very frustrating....
I stick to videos at home when I am gonna do stuff like that.

Yes, I have trouble at yoga or dance. It is so much better when the instructor is facing in the same direction as me...It takes so much effort for me to following along when having to translate R to L.

I have a heck of a time doing this. I mentioned in another thread our family recently got the Richard Simmons Sweatin' to the Oldies DVD set.

Well, we started doing the exercises and my son kept telling me that I was supposed to be walking to the other side, or moving my hands to the other side and things like that. Just constantly I kept doing them the same direction the TV was-like a mirror pretty much.

It was quite funny when he went to try it with me, as he did the same thing I did, lol. My daughter is the only one that does it in the "proper" direction.

I used to do martial arts. I could do spinning attacks clockwise. If I tried counter clockwise I would lose balance and almost fall over.

My parents forced me to take dance classes when I was a kid.

I remember being anxious when the teacher decided to change the direction of routine. I just couldn't do the same move in the opposite direction - I was very awkward.

I was in dance class (highland dancing) when I was 4. I barely remember it, though I do remember some parts of it, like learning the basics ("Point-behind-infront-behind" with the toe) and though I don't recall, mom told me I was more interested in drawing than dancing.

I don't have the issue of not correctly identifying which side I should move, but I am way better when they stand next to me and I can watch them that way.

I don't have this problem. I get confused if the instructor faces us and she wants everyone, including herself, the same way. So the whole class is moving left while she is moving right. My son's karate instructor does this too. I don't see how my son can keep up. But may be why he is on the wrong foot at times.

I definitely do. I took a belly dancing course and the mirror messed me up. Once I started focussing on the teacher's back, rather than the mirror, I did better. Still, when she would say "do a forward figure 8" (or whatever move we were doing) while facing me and doing the move, I would do a backward figure 8, etc. Group dancing was awkward until I memorized just what I was supposed to do, and where I was supposed to be at which point in the music, and ignored the other girls.

Just this past weekend I took a salsa dancing lesson. It was also the first time in my life that I had actually danced with someone. I just couldn't keep up with the left-right commands and the mirroring of the partner's moves. I don't know what the poor guy thought about me, but I was just hysterically laughing because I was really really bad at the dance. I have a feeling I had better stick with the belly dancing - its more my style, I can do it without having a partner, and I get to lead...

I have this problem, and that's why I probably use left hands for everything I was not "corrected".

I have terrible trouble with this, and as a result learned to knit the wrong way round for my alleged handedness... however, I'm not convinced which hand is the one I lead with. I don't think I'm truly ambidextrous, but I'm not far off.

The hyperfocus which you mention is proving a problem in my driving lessons... but at least it's not as bad as martial arts!