The effect of puppet play therapy intervention on communicative skills of autistic children

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the puppet play therapy intervention on communicative skills of autistic children.This research has implemented in the shape of quasi-experimental designs with pre-post test and control group as a design based action research method. The preschool age autistic children of Mashhad city was our statistical population that ten patients out of them have allocated in control and intervention group who were participated in puppet play therapy intervention in 2009-2010. The Early Social-Communication Scales (ESCS) was performed in before and after intervention. The data were analyzed by The U Mann-Whitney and The wilcoxon’s Signed-Ranks Tests. Findings indicate that in terms of total score of ESCS, there is significant differences between groups (P=0.009). Also on eye contact subscales, initiating behavioral requests (P= 0.012), low-level behavioral requests (P= 0.012), responding to social interaction (P=0.015), over all initiating behavioral requests (P=0.011), and requests implementation (P=0.005), puppet play therapy intervention group has significant differences. About achievement (P=0.335), initiating requests (P=0.214), pointing to objects (P=1.00), and give objects (P=0.74) subscales, there is no significant differences. Qualitative findings from the parental reports also indicate that intervention may be effective. The results indicate that puppet play therapy has been effective for achievement of communicative skills of autistic children.