The Application Of Motion Sensing Games On The Intervention Of Children With Autism

Autism is a neural-developmental disorder that can start from infancy,mainly characterized by language disorders,impaired social interaction,narrow interests and repeated stereotypic behaviors.The cause of Autism is still unknown,and the symptoms will last for a lifetime.Thus the training and intervention for individuals with autism is vital to improve their life quality.Motion Sensing Games are video games which could be operated by body actions with motion sensing input devices.Recently,a growing body of studies using Motion Sensing Games to train autistic children indicated positive effect.This study aims to explore the effects of Motion Sensing Games on the social skills,motor skills and daily life skills for children with autism.Methods: sixty children with Autism participated in the study.Half of them were randomly selected and assigned into the experimental group,and the other half the control group.In the experimental group,participants underwent a thirty-minute intervention consisting of a motion sensing games named “Game System for Rehabilitation(V1.0)” once or twice a week for eight weeks at least.The games were developed specifically according to the needs and characteristics of the autistic children,and it included five modules named “Rehabilitation of Intelligence”,“Rehabilitation of Upper Limbs”,“Rehabilitation of Lower Limbs”,“Rehabilitation of Cognize” and “Leisure and Healthcare”.Children in the control group did not receive the intervention.Before and after the experiment,Pediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory(PEDI)was administered to assess the children in the two groups.Results: the percentage of usage counts of “Rehabilitation of Intelligence”,“Rehabilitation of Upper Limbs”,“Rehabilitation of Lower Limbs”,“Rehabilitation of Cognize” and “Leisure and Healthcare” was 31%,7%,23%,10% and 29%.The results of Repeated Measures analysis of variance showed interaction effect between groups and pre-post tests on all three dimensions of social skills,motor skills and daily life skills and analysis of simple effects showed that experimental group had significant difference on pre-post tests and control had no significant difference.Conclusions: training with the motion sensing games showed positive effects on the social skill,motor skills and daily life skills of children with Autism,and these games could be used as a comprehensive method to train children with Autism.