The effect of intensive interaction intervention on the stereotyped behavior of children with autism spectrum disorder

 The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of intensive interaction intervention on social stereotyped behaviors of children with autism spectrum disorder.

 The method of this study was quasi-experiment with an experimental and control group and pretest, post-test. The population of this study included children with autism spectrum disorder that was selected by available sampling among the centers of autism in Ahvaz, Iran, and 11 children were randomly assigned to both experimental and control groups. The Gilliam Autism Scale (Gars) was used to measure the variables of the research. To analyze the results, descriptive statistics including mean and standard deviations of scores were used and the covariance analysis was used to control the interventional variables in the pretest.

The mean and standard deviation of the stereotyped behaviors for the experimental and control group in the pre-test stage were (28.88 ± 6.88) and (24.66 ± 9.17), respectively, and these values were in the post-test phase for The experimental and control groups were (17.9 ± 14.5) and (23.72 ± 13.13), respectively, and in the follow-up phase, the experimental and control groups were (+/- 23.5) 63/19) and (35/9 + -81 / 23).The results of one way covariance analysis indicated that the method of intensive interaction on the stereotyped behaviors was effectful (P <0.001).

According to the findings, the method of intensive interaction is effective on the stereotyped behaviors. The intensive interaction method can reduce the stereotyped behavior of children in the autism spectrum by influencing tissue and environmental stimuli.