A Study Of Using Lego^?-based Therapy To Improve Social Interaction Competence For Children With Autism And Key Element Analysis

Social interaction is one of the core deficit of children with autism spectrum disorders.Research suggests that Lego(?)-based therapy has remarkable effects on improving the core deficit in children with autism.Lego(?)-based therapy targeting at four autism children’s social behavior was adopted in this study under Chinese cultural background,including social interaction initiating and maintaining.On one hand,the efficacy of Lego(?)-based therapy in increasing social competence for different development level autism children was assessed.On the other hand,the key elements of affecting the efficacy were analyzed.Two experiments was design in this study.In experiment 1,an ABA research design was used to assess the efficacy for one autism child who can’t participate in group mode alone.And a multiple design across subjects grouped with ABAB research was used to assess the efficacy for three autism children who can participate in group mode alone.Results indicated that(1)Lego.-based therapy can’t improve social interaction competence in children with autism who can’t participate in group mode alone to some extent;(2)Lego(?)-based therapy has remarkable effects on improving social interaction competence in children with autism who can participate in group mode alone;(3)the efficacy of Lego(?)-based therapy is related to the development level of children.A multiple component research design was used to explore the key elements affecting the efficacy of intervention in experiment 2.Results indicated that Lego blocks and instructions are all key elements of Lego(?)-based therapy.The autism children initiate social interaction more frequently and maintain longer when they play Lego blocks with instructions.The theoretical and applied implications of Lego(?)-based therapy for children with autism are discussed and the future research is prospected.