Background/Purpose Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder characterized by deficit in verbal and non-verbal communication, social interaction, restricted interests, repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behaviors (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Stereotypical behavior is defined as repetitive motor or vocal responses. It is a key diagnostic feature of autism spectrum disorders (Gardenier et al., 2004), and these behaviors interfere with both the learning of new skills and the showing of appropriate behaviors (Rojahn et al., 2000). There is a limited research about the effectiveness of water exercise on reducing stereotypical behavior of children with autism (Yilmaz et al., 2004). Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the effects of pool exercise training (walking, kangaroo jump, bicycle ride, snake movements, and ball playing) on stereotypical behaviors of a child with autism.
Method The most to least prompting procedure is an errorless teaching that provides the most amount of cues at the beginning and then the amount of cues deceases within a certain time interval and order (Duker, 2004). Subject was a seven years old boy with autism. Data were collected a course of 12-week period and after 2, 4 weeks of intervention as a follow-up.
Analysis/Results The results of this study were analyzed via graphic illustrations. The results indicated that the mean number of the stereotypical behaviors during all pool exercise training sessions was 0.25, before and after 12-week were 21.6 and 4.3. Results showed that pool exercise training could be useful for reducing stereotypical behaviors for a child with autism.
Conclusions