Effects of motor visual intervention on the motor visual integration of students with autism spectrum disorder

Abstract EN

Students with Autism spectrum disorder face difficulties with their visual motor coordination.

Visual-motor integration (VMI) skills are essential for successful academic performance (Doney et al., 2016).

Autism is a disorder that covers a wide range of motor, cognitive and behavioral disturbances and influences personal and social conduct of the individual (American Psychiatric Association, 1994).

Due to the fact that children with autism are faced with movement problems because of their avoidance to participate in physical activities, they experience difficulties in learning motor skills (Lam & Yeung, 2012).

The purpose of this study is to highlight the importance of developing the motor visual integration in highly functioning autistic students which will reflect positively on the motor visual integration.

The quantitative experimental approach was adopted where the number of the autistic students in this study was 10 from two different schools, their ages range from 5.5 to 8.5 because the study was limited to grades 1, 2 and 3.

Students were divided into two groups where the control group was 5 autistic students, and the experimental group was also 5 autistic students.

The measuring instrument or tool was the Motor-free visual perception test (MVPT-3).

The pretest was done during the first trimester of the school year, and then the motor visual program was applied for two trimesters.

After that, the posttest was done and the results were submitted for analysis, where the means and standard deviations, the independent samples T- test, and the paired samples T- test were calculated.

The results of this study showed statistical differences to the benefit of the experimental group over the control group.