The Effect Of An Intervention Program On Fundamental Motor Skill Acquisition In Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders

Objective:Fundamental motor skills intervention was conducted for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders(ASD)for a period of 10 weeks to verify the effectiveness of the intervention in improving the fundamental motor skills,and to alleviate their motor motor disorders and symptoms.Methods:Children with ASD were recruited from a large psychological rehabilitation center in Wuhan,Hubei Province.The total number of ASD children was 24,aged from 6 to 12 years.Among them,10 children with ASD were taken as the treatment group(7 males and 3 females),and 14 were taken as the control group(11 males and 3 females).The treatment group was given an intervention that focused on fundamental motor skills for 10 weeks with 3 one-hour classes per week.The major contents in the intervention were locomotor and ball skills.The control group maintained the original teaching mode.The fundamental motor skills of ASD children in the treatment group and the control group were evaluated with the Test of Gross Motor Development-3(TGMD-3)before and after the intervention.Results:(1)Before the intervention,the baseline level was compared between the treatment and the control groups.The results showed that there were no significant differences in age,gender,Body Mass Index(BMI),locomotor skills,ball skills,and the total score of TGMD-3 between the two group.(2)After 10-week intervention,the scores on locomotor,ball skills and the overall TGMD in the treatment group increased significantly.There were significant differences in locomotor between the two groups(P<0.01)while the main effect of time and the interaction effect were not significant.In terms of the ball skills and total TGMD scores,there were significant main effect of time(P<0.001)and the time by group interaction(P<0.05).Conclusions:(1)Through fundamental motor skill intervention for ASD children,it is found that improving basic motor ability in the experimental group is promising and effective.(2)The improvement effect of fundamental motor skills of ASD children in the experimental group is better than the control group.