Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade, Serbia.
Faculty of Special Education and Rehabilitation, University of Belgrade, Serbia.
Percept Mot Skills. 2019 Dec;126(6):1117-1144. doi: 10.1177/0031512519867521. Epub 2019 Aug 7.
Motor disorders often accompany autism spectrum disorder (ASD), although they are not included in its diagnostic criteria. Slower motor development is evident in early childhood in this population, making early motor skills intervention advisable. As educational games and modern technology can represent new forms of treatment, this study evaluated four Kinect-based visuo-motor games called Fruits that were specially designed for this research. We sought to test whether children with ASD would show behavior changes during their game play and whether any effects would generalize to another game called Rackets. The study included 10 elementary school children with ASD, aged 9-13 years, who were divided into (a) an experimental group ( = 5) who, in addition to standard treatment, played Fruits once a week for a 5-week period and Rackets both before and after the 5-week period and (b) a control group ( = 5) who received only standard treatment during this period and also played Rackets before and after it. We found significant improvements in gross motor skills and successful generalization of acquired skills among children in the experimental group relative to the control group. The experimental group also showed an increase in positive emotions and a decrease in loss of attention while playing the games. These preliminary findings indicate a motor skill benefit for children with ASD who play Kinect-based educational games, but further research is needed to replicate and expand these findings with larger participant samples.
运动障碍常伴随自闭症谱系障碍（ASD），尽管它们并不包含在其诊断标准中。在该人群中，幼儿期的运动发育较慢，因此建议早期进行运动技能干预。由于教育游戏和现代技术可以代表新的治疗形式，因此本研究评估了四个名为“Fruits”的基于 Kinect 的视动游戏，这些游戏是专为这项研究设计的。我们试图测试 ASD 儿童在游戏过程中是否会表现出行为变化，以及任何效果是否会推广到另一个名为“Rackets”的游戏。这项研究包括 10 名 9-13 岁的 ASD 小学生，他们被分为（a）实验组（ = 5），除了标准治疗外，每周还玩一次“Fruits”，为期 5 周，在 5 周前后还玩“Rackets”，（b）对照组（ = 5），在此期间仅接受标准治疗，在前后也玩“Rackets”。我们发现实验组儿童的粗大运动技能显著提高，并且在获得的技能方面有成功的泛化，而对照组则没有。实验组在玩游戏时还表现出积极情绪的增加和注意力丧失的减少。这些初步发现表明，对于玩基于 Kinect 的教育游戏的 ASD 儿童，运动技能有一定益处，但需要进一步研究以更大的参与者样本复制和扩展这些发现。
