Efficacy of Short-term Comprehensive Training on 45 Autistic Children

Objective To explore the efficacy of short-term comprehensive training on the autistic children and to provide the effective evidence to rehabilitation training further.Methods The comprehensive training,including structured training,sensory integration training,multi-sensory stimulation,was used to train the 45 autistic children within 3 months.They were asked to train 4 hours per day,6 days per week.Before and after the training,Autism Behavior Checklist(ABC),Autism Treatment Evaluation Checklist(ATEC),Child Autism Rating Scale(CARS) and Psycho-educational Profile(PEP) were used to assess the autism children by professional teachers.Results The overall score of ABC,CARS and ATEC of 45 children with autism was significantly lower than that before training(before and after training: ABC,92.95 vs 55.14,P0.01),CARS,37.12 vs 29.48(P0.01) and ATEC,68.00 vs 57.09(P0.05),separately.The behavior subscale score of ATEC was lower than that before training(21.77 vs 17.86,P0.05).The developing score of PEP was higher than that before training(54.33 vs 84.38,P0.01).The results showed that short-term comprehensive training could reduce the symptoms of the autistic children,and correct their abnormal behavior,but the short-term comprehensive training couldn't make the ability of social communication,speech and sensory perception better.It was necessary for autism children to experience a long term and high frequency rehabilitation training.Conclusion Comprehensive training is an effective program to improve the development outcome of autistic children.A long-term high-density rehabilitation training should be given to the autistic children to improve their abilities of verbal,sociality and communication.