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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Pediatric Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1496660
This article is part of the Research Topic Autism: The Movement (Sensing) Perspective a Decade Later View all 23 articles

Effects of Group Sports Activities on Physical Activity and Social Interaction Abilities of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Provisionally accepted
Yu Xing Yu Xing 1*Yatong Zhao Yatong Zhao 1*Xueping Wu Xueping Wu 2*
  • 1 Hainan University, Haikou, China
  • 2 Shanghai University of Sport, Shanghai, Shanghai Municipality, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Group sports activities have been demonstrated to have an impact on the physical activity and social interaction abilities of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Thus, this work, taking different types of group sports as the primary variable, explored the impact of 12-week group sports activities on the physical activity and social interaction abilities of children with ASD. A quasi-experimental design was used to divide 21 children with ASD into Experimental group (N=11) and Control group 1 (N=10), while healthy children of the same age were selected as Control group 2 (N=12). The experimental group performed group sports activities for 60 minutes/time, 4 times/week, for a total of 12 weeks, while the control group maintained the traditional sports activities of Peizhi School. Physical activity was monitored using a three-axis accelerometer (Model: ActiGraph GT3X+), and social interaction ability was measured using the playground observation of peer engagement (POPE) observation scale to evaluate the social interaction states of children in the experimental group after the physical activities. After the intervention, the sitting time of children in the experimental group was significantly reduced (t=-12.735, P< 0.001, Cohen d=2.75), and the time of moderate and high-intensity physical activity was significantly increased (t=-8.79, P< 0.001, Cohen d =1.82). In social interaction ability, the duration of loneliness was significantly reduced (t=-2.567, P= 0.017, Cohen d=0.57), and the duration of joint participation (t=-3.009, P= 0.007, Cohen d=0.02) and the regular game (t=-2.511, P= 0.026, Cohen d=0.46) were significantly increased, respectively. Four weeks after the intervention, the sedentary behavior and loneliness of the experimental group both continued to decrease. Group physical activities can improve the physical activity levels and social interaction skills of children with ASD and have a good effect on the maintenance.

    Keywords: Autism autism spectrum disorder, Group group sports activities, Physical physical activity, physical activity, Social Interaction Ability

    Received: 15 Sep 2024; Accepted: 18 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Xing, Zhao and Wu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Yu Xing, Hainan University, Haikou, China
    Yatong Zhao, Hainan University, Haikou, China
    Xueping Wu, Shanghai University of Sport, Shanghai, 200072, Shanghai Municipality, China

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