Effectiveness of sensory integration exercises on social interactions and stereotypical behaviors of children with autism spectrum disorder

Autism spectrum disorder is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by severe impairment in social interactions, poor communication skills, and stereotyped behaviors. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of sensory integration exercises on social interactions and stereotyped behaviors of children with ASD. For this purpose, a quasi-experimental design of pre-test-post-test was performed with experimental and control groups. The statistical population of this study was included all students aged 5 to 12 years with ASD in Arak, in the academic year 2018- 2019. The sample was selected and randomly divided into experimental and control groups (13 in each group). The experimental group received 12 sessions, three days a week and each session lasted 45 minutes of sensory integration intervention, while the control group did not receive any intervention. For data collection, Revised Scale of Repetitive Behaviors (Bodfish and Symons; Parker and Lewis, 2000) and a Social Interaction Questionnaire (Kadesjö et al., 2004) were used before and after the intervention. Then the data were analyzed using multivariate analysis of covariance by SPSS19 software. The findings showed that there was significant difference between the score of stereotyped behaviors (0.001) and social interactions (0.015) in the experimental group. Overall, it was concluded that sensory integration exercises reduce stereotyped behaviors and improve social interactions. Therefore, it is suggested that sensory integration exercises be used to improve social interactions and reduce stereotyped behaviors in children with an autism spectrum disorder.