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Preliminary Results of a 12 Week Motor Skill Intervention on Motor Skills for 3-5 Year Old Children with ASD
Fundamental motor skills are the foundation skills required for children to engage in more complex games and activities; they include running, throwing, catching, kicking, etc. Fundamental motor skills are also critical to engagement in active play in early childhood. Active play is a critical venue where social, communication and even behavioural skills are developed in addition to engagement in age appropriate physical activity. Evidence indicates that children with ASD experience delays in fundamental motor skills. Well-controlled intervention studies that target fundamental motor skills are scarce.
Objectives:
The purpose of this study was to conduct a 12 week, 2x/week fundamental motor skill intervention for 3-5 year old children with ASD to examine if motor skills improve.
Methods:
14 children with ASD (11 male, 3 female, Mean age = 3.51 ± .52) were recruited for a 12 week, 2 hours/week, wait-list controlled fundamental motor skill intervention. Participants were randomly assigned to the intervention (n = 7, Mean age = 3.74 ± 0.69) or control group (n = 7, Mean age = 3.38 ± 0.13). As part of a larger ongoing study motor skills were measured 3 ways at pre-test and post-test. The Test of Gross Motor Development-2 (TGMD-2), the Peabody Developmental Motor Scales-2 (PDMS-2), and lastly the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, 2nd Edition (VABS-2) parent/caregiver form (motor subscale) were used to triangulate the motor assessments of the participants and provide a comprehensive picture of skill. A 2x2 repeated measures analysis was conducted on each of the assessments.
Results:
At the pre-test assessment, all children with ASD were significantly delayed in their motor skills as measured by each of the TGMD-2, the PDMS-2 and the VABS-2 motor subscale with most scoring at or below the 1st percentile. There were no significant differences between the groups at the pre-test. For the gross motor quotient of the TGMD-2, there was a significant effect for time (p = 0.002) but the group by time interaction was not significant. For the PDMS-2 gross motor quotient there was a significant effect for time (p = 0.03) but no effect for the group x time interaction. For the VABS-2 motor scale the effect for time was approaching significance (p=.09) but again no effect for group x time.
Conclusions:
All the children demonstrated significant delays in motor skills at the baseline assessment. The delays were so significant that challenges in age appropriate active play would be impeded. This finding indicates that early intervention on gross motor skills in addition to traditional interventions (e.g. behavioural, speech and language) is warranted for 3-5 year old children with ASD. These preliminary results of the 12 week, 2 hours/week motor intervention indicate an overall positive effect but a much larger sample size is needed due to high variability in the performance of the participants.