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Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit poor imitation, movement planning, and praxis skills that in turn compound their core social communication and behavioral difficulties.

Our randomized controlled trial compares the effects of 2 whole-body movement interventions (creative movement [“Play”] and general exercise [“Move”]) to those of a seated play standard-of-care intervention (“Create”) on imitation and praxis skills in children with ASD. As part of this clinical trial, we also compare face-to-face (F2F) versus telehealth (TH) modes of intervention delivery in each of the three groups.

A total of 44 children with ASD aged between 5 and 14 years participated in this 10-week study. Children were matched at baseline and assigned to the Play, Move, or Create groups (n=14-15/group). Approximately half of the children in each group were seen F2F, while the other half were seen via TH. Training was provided 2 times/week (60-90 minutes/session) for 8 weeks. We administered the Bilateral Motor Coordination (BMC) and Postural Praxis (PP) subtests of the Sensory Integration and Praxis Test (SIPT) at pretest and posttest and assessed spatial and temporal errors in movement execution during both tests. We calculated the percent total imitation error score for both subtests.

For the SIPT-PP, we found a reduction in percent total errors from pretest to posttest in the Play (pretest: mean 15.8%, SE 1.1%; posttest: mean 12.9%, SE 1.1%; P≤.05), Move (pretest: mean 17.1%, SE 1.4%; posttest: mean 14.8%, SE 1.2%; P≤.05), and …