The Effectiveness of Child-Centered Play Therapy on Mind Theory in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

The present study was conducted with the aim of investigating the effectiveness of child-centered play therapy on the theory of mind of children with autism spectrum.

quasi-experimental method was used with single group pre-test and post-test. The statistical population included a number of 7 to 9-year-old children with autism spectrum disorder in Semnan city in the academic year of 1401-1401; After selecting the desired school in a targeted manner, 13 students who met the research criteria were selected as a sample. Before and after the intervention, the students were tested to evaluate the effectiveness of play therapy. Play therapy sessions were held for 8 one-hour sessions during four weeks. Garez's autism disorder scoring scale was used to ensure the psychiatrist's diagnosis in autistic children and to measure the theory of mind, the 38-question form of the theory of mind test was used. Also, in this research, the intelligence score of these children was investigated. The range of the general intelligence score in the four revised Wechsler intelligence test was from 89 to 101, and the mean and standard deviation of their general intelligence was 95.54 ± 3.77. The data of this research has been analyzed using paired t-test and using SPSS software.

The findings show that autism spectrum children have made significant progress in all three components or all three levels of theory of mind in the post-test compared to the pre-test (p<0.01).

According to the results obtained, the hypothesis of the research that "child-centered play therapy has a significant effect on the theory of mind of children with autism spectrum disorder" was confirmed and the effect of an educational factor (other than the temperament factor) on the development of the theory of mind can be confirmed. confirmed and benefited from child-centered play therapy as one of the methods to improve the theory of mind of autistic children.