intermediate poster                                                                 Introduction

• Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) commonly known as autism is a group of mental conditions of brain development disorders (Autism Speaks, 2016).
• Sensory processing disorder (SPD) a condition in which the brain has troubles receiving and responding to information that comes in through the senses (About SPD, 2016 ).
• When someone is affected by this disorder they are only affected in one of the senses such as smell, touch etc (About SPD, 2016)
• A study done in the field investigated perceptual and neural responses to affective tactile textures stimulation in adults with autism (Cascio, et al. 2012).
• One recent study done investigated effectiveness of an aquatic playgroup on the playfulness of children between the ages 2-3 with autism disorder (Fabrizi, 2015).

Thesis:

Its predicted that textured playing cards help children with sensory processing disorder improve their sensory processing skills.

                                                              Methods

Subjects

• Participants parents were motivated to let their children be part of the study by being told that the study will add more research to the field and help develop different ways to help their children overcome their sensory issues.
• Participants were recruited from different daycare in long island.

Apparatus

• Participants will play a card game and the cards have different textures.
• Participants will be exposed to different textures such as soft, hard and rough textures.

Procedures

• Children meet up once a wee one hour and for a total of six weeks.
• Boys were divided into groups of threes there were a total of twelve boys.
• Only two groups were to play the game the other two groups had to sit aside.
• When the boys arrived to their section of playing card they were asked to choose from the cards which ones they liked.
• Played game with their group members and had to tell the name of the animal on the card and how they felt about the textured.
• Game went for two hours
• At the end the children were asked again to choose from the cards which one they liked.

                                                                   RESULTS

• Based on the results the groups that played the game for the six weeks improved more than the two groups that were not playing the game.
• The average of group 1 was 1.16, group 2- 2.83, group 3- 1.57 and group 4- 2.57. the group with the highest average of improvement was group 2 which was the group with autism and sensory processing disorder.
• Data was collected weekly
• The results collected were the amount of cards the children would say the like.

                                                                   DISCUSSION

• Textured card game can be a helpful technique to help the children in this population improve their skills.
• Textured card game offers a different form of therapy like environment.
• This study advances the field by adding additional research .
• Potential problems with the study is that it wasn’t well administered since the people leading the study aren’t experienced.
• One of the studies done in the field was done with adults that had autism instead of children. The adults were given three types of textures and they were to rate the textures by roughness or pleasantness (Cascio, et al. 2012).
• Another study previously done investigated effectiveness of an aquatic playgroup on the playfulness of children between the ages 2-3 with autism disorder (Fabrizi, 2015). Two different test were used the test of playfulness and test of environmental supportiveness were used to measure playfulness, caregiver’s promotion of play, and adequacy of the sensory environment

–

                                                            REFERENCES

Bibliography

Autism Speaks. (2016). what is autism. Retrieved may 1st, 2016 from Autism speaks: https://www.autismspeaks.org/what-autism

Cascio, C. J., Moana-Filho, E. J., Guest, S., Nebel, M. B., Weisner, J., Baranek, G. T., & Essiick, G. K. (2012, March 23). Perceptual and Neural Response to Affective Tactile Texture Stimulation in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders. In NCBI. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3517930/

 About SPD. (2016). In Spdstar.org. Retrieved December 6, 2016.

  Fabrizi, S. E. (2015, December 11). Splashing Our Way to Playfulness! An Aquatic Playgroup for Young Children With Autism, A Repeated Measures Design. Retrieved from journal of occupational therapy