Effect of Auditory based Play Therapy on Auditory Avoidance Behavior Among Children with Asd

Abstract

Introduction: Autism is a set of heterogeneous neurodevelopment conditions, characterized by early-onset difficulties in social communication and unusually restricted, repetitive behavior and interests. The worldwide population prevalence is about 1%. Autism affects more male than female individuals, and co-morbidity is common (>70% have concurrent conditions). Individuals with autism have atypical cognitive profiles, such as impaired social cognition and social perception, executive dysfunction, and atypical perceptual and information processing. These profiles are underpinned by atypical neural development at the systems level. Genetics has a key role in the etiology of autism, in conjunction with developmentally early environmental factors. Large-effect is mutations and small-effect common variants contribute to risk (Meng-Chuan Lai et al. Lancet. 2014). Auditory defensiveness is characterized by an extreme sensitivity to sound. The child’s nervous system may interpret sounds as too loud, or the pitch may be intolerable. To deal with the discomfort, the child may act out, try and avoid or minimize the auditory input, hyper-focus on something else, or escape.

Objectives:

• To select the children with auditory avoidance behavior among children with ASD with help of short sensory profile. To find out the effect of conventional occupational therapy in control group.


• To find out the effect of auditory based play therapy on auditory avoidance behavior among children with ASD in experimental group.


• To compare the effect between auditory based play therapy and conventional occupational therapy among control group and experimental group.

Methods: 30 ASD children with auditory avoidance behavior were selected for the study based on the assessment. The assessment tool (short sensory profile) was used as pre and post test score. 15 children were given auditory based play therapy that was in experimental group and 15 children were given conventional occupational therapy that was in control group. Post test were taken after 12 weeks of intervention. The results were obtained by comparing the pre test and post test scores.

Results: The results showed that the comparison of pre and post-test mean short sensory profile scores of the experimental group were highly statistically significant, as compared to the control group because of the effect of auditory based play therapy ot reduce auditory avoidance  behavior. Since the p value of 0.001 is lesser than 0.05,.The short sensory profile measure scores of the pre and post test of the control group were significantly lower that was that of the experimental group after the implementation of auditory based play therapy on auditory avoidance behavior  

Conclusions: The current study concludes that there was a significant improvement in the experimental group than the control group after the auditory based play therapy. Thus, this study proves that auditory based play therapy can be used as an effective intervention to reduce auditory avoidance behavior by using short sensory profile (SSP) for children with ASD.