Autism Foundations of Research Inquiry in Health

Question: Can autistic children improve their daily life from dance lessons? Answer: Children with autism have difficulty in communication and socially interacting with others. They fail to form the social responses and do not have the relation building ability. Some of the behaviors exhibited by them include response failure, no eye contact and ignoring. Therefore, they fail to develop the social skills and cannot perform group activities. They also cannot express their feelings and expressions and cannot understand the same of others. Research studies have shown that increasing the interaction of the children suffering from autism spectrum disorders can improve their communication and social interaction skills. Utilization of dance pads in association with the strategy of response stimulation helps the children with autism in performing the activity of walking. The dance pad had been so modified into the detector of foot tapping which can be used to detect the responses of the participant. Therefore, the present study aims at the improvement of the daily life of the children suffering from autism with the help of dance and other related activities. Method The methodology of the present study was based on three related research articles, which aimed at improving the daily life of the children with autism and the methods that can be implemented to achieve this objective. The methods were based on practical applications, which were interpretations of the theoretical aspect of the issues that the children with autism face in their daily lives. Shih et al. (2014) performed a study on the children with autism spectrum disorders to help them in the walking activity by the utilization of the dance pads, which were combined with an environmental stimulation. The study comprised of four students who were divided into two groups. Out of the two participants in each group, one was suffering from autism and the other had an intellectual disability. All the participants were students of the senior high school. The equipment used for the study included two dance pads which were connected to the computer having the software for detecting the responses of the participants. The dance pads were used as walking panels where the participants were expected to walk collaboratively. Up to three sessions were conducted every day during the study period with an individual session of 3 minutes. The activity was conducted in the school of the participants where they are quite familiar and they can be comfortable with the study. The baseline phase included two phases and the participants performed three sessions during this period. The intervention phase had two phases with eleven sessions. Activation of the preferred simulation was done for investigating the intervention effects. Bhatara et al. (2009) conducted a research work to study how music can have its impact on the adolescents suffering from autism. Two groups were formed for the study which included thirty-three children initially, who were later joined with forty-six others from different sources and of different age. The participants qualified the WASI (Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence). Then they were screened based on their demands of the auditory temporal. Stimuli were measured by the paradigm of animations. Matching the music with the animation and then doing the reverse was the aim of the study. In addition, silent and music animations were employed for the study. The participants visualized all the animations, which were divided into two blocks. The first block included 8 animations which were silent and the second block included 10 animations which had music accompanied. The presentation order was random and counterbalanced. The dependent variables were description length, music mat ching, description appropriateness and intentionality presence. The diagnosis was the independent variable. Chaplin Norton (2015) conducted a study on the mind of the children and their performance desire. 159 children from middle-class families participated in the study. The study comprised of interviewing the children on an individual basis. The children were asked to perform a theory of mind and a preference task. The order of the theory of mind task was counterbalanced. The preference task involved four activities providing the students with random options like dancing and singing without music. The nonperformance tasks were circling of red shapes and coloring in a square on a given page. Out of these, two options had to be chosen and completed by the children, which was supervised by the experimenter. Finally, dancing and singing were selected as the performance behaviors. The theory of mind tasks involved three tasks, which were the cookie box test for the misleading container, the social test of the duck and the lion, and the false belief task of Sally and Anne. The participants we re expected to pass the test and control questions for scoring a point. Results The results of the experiment conducted by Shih et al. (2014) suggested that the collaborative walking rate for the first group was 14.67 during the first phase of the baseline. However, with the introduction of stimulation in the first phase of intervention, the mean rate was found to be 151.82 and an increase was noted. The second phase of baseline recorded a drop to 40.00, which was followed by an increase in the second phase of intervention in the mean rate, which was recorded as 170.46. For the second group, the first phase of baseline recorded a mean rate of 16.00 whereas the first phase of intervention recorded a marked increase to 157.36. The second phase of baseline recorded a drop to 23.33 in the mean rate and recorded an increase during the second phase of intervention to 178.36. The results, however, suggested that the participants of both the groups had reduced willingness to perform the walking in a collaborative manner, which significantly increased in the intervention phase. The variation in the two phases of intervention and baseline was quite significant. The results of the study conducted by Bhatara et al. (2009) were based on the various methods performed during the study. For music matching, ANOVA was performed on a two-way repeated basis on the ratings with animation as a factor of within subject and diagnosis as a factor of between subjects. The results for the diagnostic groups had no significant differences in the ratings whereas there were significant differences in the ratings for the animation groups. The length of the scores of description was determined by performing ANOVA on a three-way repeated basis. Animation was the factor of within-subject and diagnosis were the factors of between-subjects. The main effects of both these groups were also very significant. The appropriateness scores were measured by performing ANOVA on a three was repeated basis. Animation was the factor of within subject and diagnosis were the factors of between subjects. However, the main effects were significant for animation and not significant fo r diagnosis. The other results obtained were of intentionality, subgroups within the spectrum of autism and verbal IQ. For all these, the significance of the animation and diagnosis factors varied as per the performance of the groups. For the study conducted by Chaplin Norton (2015), age was found to be not a decisive factor for choosing to dance or sing. About 31.2% of the children, who were 3 years old and 18.8% who were 4 years old selected both dancing and singing as the activity of their choice. On the contrary, none of the children of the same age opted to do either of the activities. In addition, it was true for the elder participants to avoid the coloring and circling tasks as well. Bootstrapping procedures were employed to infer the self-esteem and theory of mind roles to find the relation between performance and age. The model of partial mediation was found to be superior to the non-mediation and the full mediation models. So four models of partial mediation were employed to obtain the results. The third model of partial mediation was found to be the best fit and suggested that theory of mind was related to age positively whereas self-esteem was related to theory of mind much negatively and significantl y. Discussion From the literature review and research articles, a number of facts regarding the children suffering from autism came to the forefront. Children suffering from autism have reduced abilities in communication and relationship establishment with others. Activities, which can help in increasing the communication and coordination, which can help the children with autism, increase the interaction socially. Several methods and ideas have been worked on and developed to help the children suffering from autism. Shih et al. (2014) designed their experiment to determine whether the children with autism can walk collaboratively with their partners on the dance pads. To increase the probability of collaboration, two dance pads were utilized. During the baseline phase, it was observed that the performance willingness was low among the participants. While the intervention phase indicated a marked rise in the willingness as their stimulation of preference was provided. Therefore, from the study, it was deduced that the dance pads with preferred stimulation could improve the collaborative walking ability among the children suffering from autism. Since the experiment had satisfactory results, there is a possibility further expanding the limits of the study. In addition, it can be predicted that performing the study in a different environment with increased participants may result in varied results. From the study conducted by Bhatara et al. (2009), it was analyzed that the children suffering from autism lack the ability to coordinate the visual and auditory information which includes the linguistic information processing. More response was obtained from the children suffering from autism in case of animations, which were accompanied with the music. They also successfully coordinated the audio and visual responses, which is a lacking ability among the children suffering from autism. The description of the music related animations was less when compared with the descriptions given by the participants for the silent animations. Therefore it was assessed that music can be a source of confliction in case of the perception of the participants of the visual animations. The descriptions of the participants regarding the theory of mind resulted in the intentionality decrease when music was added. Music, in this case, acted as a source of distraction and conflict. From the studies of Chaplin Norton (2015), it was deduced that the theory of mind can assist the children in elevating their self-esteem. As the children attain maturity, it has been seen that their performance desire decreases. It was also seen that the performance desire begins at the age of four and continues until the age of puberty, as they develop lower self-esteem. Theory of mind may also be related to the decrease in the enjoyable behaviors, which may include dancing and singing. These activities mainly include the performances that are done to improve the happiness and health of the children. So the children suffering from autism can be benefitted with the activity of dancing and also it is good for their health. Group dancing will also promote their ability to collaborate and interact with others, a lacking feature often found among the children suffering from autism. Conclusion Autism has been recognized as a developmental disorder and approximately 100,000 children are suffering from it. This disease greatly reduces the ability of the child to relate and communicate with others. Under these circumstances, dance can be an effective method to improve the daily life of the children suffering from autism. References Bhatara, A. K., Quintin, E. M., Heaton, P., Fombonne, E., Levitin, D. J. (2009). The effect of music on social attribution in adolescents with autism spectrum disorders.Child Neuropsychology,15(4), 375-396. Chaplin, L. N., Norton, M. I. (2015). Why We Think We Can't Dance: Theory of Mind and Children's Desire to Perform.Child development,86(2), 651-658. Shih, Ching-Hsiang, et al. "Assisting students with autism to actively perform collaborative walking activity with their peers using dance pads combined with preferred environmental stimulation."Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders8.11 (2014): 1591-1596.