Abstract:
This investigation examined the effects of perceptual-motor intervention on gross and fine motor skills along with social deficiency of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Eighteen school aged children with ASD were randomly selected to an experimental (n=9) or a control group (n=9). The Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency (BOTMP) was used to measure the fine and gross motor and Gilliam Autism Rating Scale-Second Edition (GARS-2) was used to evaluate the social dysfunction of participants. Participants in the experimental group were engage in 16 weeks perceptual-motor training. …show more content…
Social dysfunction in children with autism spectrum disorders embraces symptoms such as, lack of smiling and insufficient use of eye contact, failure to give and acknowledge compliments during a social exchange and impairment in asking and responding to questions, lack of respond to social stimulus, difficulty in initiating and sustaining social interactions, problems in interpreting social cues, emotions, and facial expression both verbally (e.g., language) and non-verbally (e.g., eye contact and gestures). (Payne page 465; Movahedi et al., 2013; MacDonald, Lord & Ulrich, 2013). Social interaction difficulty that individuals with ASD experience mainly relate to a lack of understanding of others behavior. This deficiency results from an inability to sufficiently interpret, consider or respond to the emotional and social signals of others conveying through, eye contact and facial expressions. In general, such deficiencies in non-verbal communication skills are pertained to as a lack of ‘‘theory of mind’’ Implying a limited capacity to pay attention to, and understand the feelings, plans and purposes of others (Sowa & Meulenbroek, 2012) Social behavior and emotions in these children is not commensurate with their ages, mostly in lower level than their ages. They do not pay attention to their surroundings things and their family members (Runcharoen,