Objective: One of the areas of impairment in childhood autism spectrum disorders is delayed imitation. Due to the defect in the social function of imitation in these children and its negative consequences on lexical and verbal skills, Researchers in the field of educating autistic children consider increasing imitation skills to be a very important therapeutic goal. Previous studies have shown the effects of improving imitation on increasing the social, linguistic, and verbal skills of these children. In the present study, the effect of reciprocal imitation training on increasing the vocabulary of autistic children was investigated. Materials and Methods: This was an interventional study with a pretest-posttest design. 16 autistic children were trained in cross- border imitation based on expressive vocabulary in 96 sessions. After performing post-test and data collection in data analysis from the McNemar test to determine the changes of each word before and after the intervention and the Wilcoxon Marked Test was used to determine changes in vocabulary categories before and after the intervention and the level of statistical significance was considered (P> 0.05). Results: The results of data analysis show that the average number of responses "expresses" in each of the words after the intervention increased significantly in all vocabulary groups (P> 0.05). It seems that the intervention resulted in significant changes in participants. Conclusion: The results of this study show that teaching the method of reciprocal imitation has a significant effect on increasing the number of expressive words in autistic children.
Background: Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) show significant motor deficits and behavioral dysfunctions, as part of their clinical manifestations. Also, these children are facing important difficulties in social learning, which negatively impacts their adjustment to society’s requirements. Apart from other modes of exercise, aquatic exercises may be more attractive to children. Aquatic exercises have been shown to have a beneficial effect on gross motor skills and executive functions in children with ASD. Aim: To study the influence of aquatic exercises on the physical and psychological health of children with ASD. Methods: Researchers used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines for reporting systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Researchers looked for articles on PubMed, Google Scholar, and by manual search. Searched articles were screened for relevancy. Potential articles were selected using inclusion and exclusion criteria. Results: Out of the 231 articles, four studies were included in the current systematic review. The age of participants ranged from 3−15 years. Overall, included studies found improvements in various aspects of gross motor and executive functions by aquatic exercise in children with ASD. Conclusion: Aquatic exercises can provide health benefits to children with ASD. Aquatic exercises can be useful as a part of therapy in children with ASD. There is wide scope for further studies to evaluate the beneficial effects of aquatic exercises.
