Effects of physical activity on debilitating behaviours in 13- to 20-year-old males with severe autism spectrum disorder

Abstract

The presented study investigated the extent to which engaging in a therapeutic sporting programme in males with severe autism spectrum disorder (ASD) improves the debilitating behaviours commonly associ-ated with ASD. Furthermore, the views of parents of the autistic partici-pants were assessed concerning the effectiveness of the programme. Participants were eight 13- to 20-year-old males born in the United Kingdom from a school and sports college for pupils with severe learn-ing difficulties. The selection was using volunteer sampling from the "Monday Club" initiative, run by Saracens Sports Foundation in part-nership with a local school and specialist sports college. The Gilliam Autism Rating Scale, 3rd edition was administered to identify and mea-sure the severity of ASD behaviours at four time periods namely: at pro-gramme entry as the baseline (Time 1, T1), a second time after 8 weeks (Time 2, T2), a third time after 16 weeks (Time 3, T3), and a fourth time post programme (Time 4, T4). The results showed that for the more se-vere cases of ASD (Autism Index > 101) there was no positive change in subscale performance from T1 to T2. For milder cases (Autism Index, 71-100) there were subtle non-significant improvements on the sub-scale scores from T1 to T2. Of the 6 subscales at T2, emotional respons-es, cognitive style, and maladaptive speech approached significance at the P=0.05 level. At T3 and T4, there was also no statistically significant improvement in ASD behaviours compared to the baseline for either condition. Finally parents' were "very satisfied" with their child's partici-pation in the physical activity programme.