Designing, development and effectiveness of social animation program on communication and social skills of children with autism spectrum disorder

The aim of this study was to design and construct a social animation program for children with autism disorders and its effectiveness on communication and social skills of these children. The present study was a quasi-experimental study with control group and pre-test and post-test design. The statistical population included all children with autism spectrum disorder in Tehran, from among which 16 boys with autism in the age range of 5 to 10 years old were selected by convenience sampling method and then randomly assigned into two experiment and control groups. Then, the children of the experiment group participated in 30 one hour sessions, three days a week including social animation program, which in addition to animation, included the use of finger and hand puppets, puzzles, cartoon illustrations, emotional masks, and family-focused games. Parents in both groups responded to the Autism Assessment Evaluation (ATEC) (Rimland & Adelsen, 2011) before and after intervention. To analyze the data, multivariate covariance analysis and SPSS-21 software was used. The scores of the experiment group in the post-test stage showed a significant decrease in all test subscales (communication, social, cognitive, and repetitive and stereotypical behaviors) compared to pretest, and also there is a significant difference between the two groups in all test subscales (P<0.001). It can be concluded that reducing the scores in the subscales of the the Autism Assessment Evaluation is due to improvement in the performance of these children. The results show that the above program is effective in improving the communication and social skills of children with autism spectrum disorder.