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BY 4.0 license Open Access Published by De Gruyter Open Access January 1, 2019

Enhancement of psychomotor skills in children with autism spectrum disorder by employing a mechatronic training kit

  • Ramya S. Moorthy , Kritika Iyer , R. Hari Krishnan and S. Pugazhenthi EMAIL logo

Abstract

Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in children has been increasing over the years. These children, when compared to typically growing children, face challenges in leading a day-to-day life. Other than the social interactions, communication and cognitive skills, psychomotor skill deficits are also found in them. This paper focuses on enhancement of psychomotor skills in children with ASD by employing a mechatronic training kit. Training using this kit aims at developing skills like ‘palmar grasp’, ‘wrist rotation’ and ‘eye-hand coordination’. Trials were conducted with six children with autism aged between four and nine years. Significant improvements were seen in these children both in skills and in behaviour after the training. Thus, teaching psychomotor skills to children with autism using the newly developed mechatronic door training kit is found to be working and the results are encouraging.

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Received: 2018-02-07
Accepted: 2018-10-01
Published Online: 2019-01-01

© 2019 Ramya S. Moorthy, et al., published by De Gruyter

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Public License.

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