Effectiveness of Hydrotherapy on the Degree of Aggression in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Single-Subject Study

  Aggression is a phenomenon prevalent among children with ASD which makes the processes of training and rehabilitation difficult for them and can result in delays in acquiring developmental skills. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of hydrotherapy on the degree of aggression in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The present study used an A-B single-subject research design. The population consisted of all children with ASD in Alborz Province. Making use of the purposive sampling method three children were diagnosed to suffer from ASD. The research instruments were the Gilliam Autism Rating Scale (GARS) and a researcher-made checklist to measure aggression. Therapy sessions were conducted according to Halliwick instructions for two months (totally for 8 weeks and 16 sessions). To analyze the data, after drawing charts and the stability and process container, the effectiveness of the independent variable on the dependent variable was assessed applying intra- and inter-situational analyses. During visual analysis of the data chart, intervention was effective on all of the three participants. The Percentage of Non-Overlapping Data (PND) in the two baseline and intervention situations for the three participants were 100, 87.5, and 100%, respectively. The results indicated that hydrotherapy significantly results in reducing aggression in children with ASD. Thus, it is suggested that this method be used as a complementary method in training and rehabilitation of children with ASD.