| Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder(ASD)often show persistent impairments in social interactions and communication,accompanied by repetitive,stereotypical behaviors,activities or narrow interests.In recent years,with the increasing improvement of public awareness and diagnostic technology,the prevalence of ASD has been increasing year by year,but its pathological causes and neural basis have not been clear.At present,a large number of studies have found that children with ASD have abnormalities in interoceptive sensation.Interoceptive sensation refers to the ability to perceive the internal signals of the body and send them to the brain,which can reflect the internal state of the body and its internal organs.This abnormality may have an impact on their multisensory integration ability,which is an important reason for their social disturbance,stereotypical behavior and emotional anxiety.However,most of the current studies only focus on the role of external sensation,ignoring the role of internal sensation on the one hand,and lack of attention to the integration of the two kinds of sensation on the other hand.Therefore,this study focuses on the interoceptive characteristics of children with ASD and the research of intervention methods.Among them,study 1 and study 2 used the classic heartbeats tracking paradigm and the rubber hand illusion paradigm respectively to explore the differences in interoceptive characteristics between children with ASD and TD(Typical Developing),as well as the relationship between interoception and multisensory integration.Based on the results of the first and second studies,the third study independently proposed and designed a set of comprehensive Sensory Intervention model for internal feelings,namely "SPR Intervention",with"Sensory Integration","Physical Exercise" and "Relational Developing Intervention"as the core methods.The main results and conclusions are as follows:(1)Overall,there was no significant difference in IA between children with ASD and children with TD.However,IA in children with ASD tended to be higher than that in children with TD at longer time intervals,indicating that children with ASD had stronger continuous attention to internal sensation.(2)Proprioceptive shift was lower in children with ASD than in children with TD,and IA was negatively correlated with proprioceptive shift,indicating that children with ASD had stronger interoception and had difficulties in multisensory integration,and interoception play an inhibitory role in the process of multisensory integration.(3)Compared with the control group,IA in the intervention group for a long time before and after training was significantly decreased,and proprioceptive shift was significantly increased,indicating that "SPR intervention" can improve the children’s over-strong interoception and multisensory integration ability.(4)Compared with the control group,the symptoms of autism in the intervention group were significantly improved before and after training and after delayed testing,which was reflected in the significant reduction of total scores,speech/language/communication scores,health/body/behavior scores,indicating that"SPR intervention" can also improve other symptoms of children;(5)Compared with children with mild ASD,children with moderate ASD showed a greater decline in the scores of speech/language/communication,social interaction,and health/body/behavior,indicating that children with moderate ASD improved more significantly with the progress of intervention time,and the effect of" SPR intervention"could be maintained until at least two months after the end of training.In conclusion,this study found that ASD children’s interoception are abnormal,and the intervention mode "SPR intervention" proposed and designed for ASD children’s interoception can help improve their interoception and multisensory integration ability,and also promote their language,physical and social development,especially for moderate children.At the same time,the results of this study and intervention practice have many implications for screening and education of ASD children. |
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