ABSTRACT

Objective : The purposes of this study are to compare the effects of the sensory integration therapy and the applied behavior analysis to decreasing stereotypic behaviors in a child with autism.Methods : This study used an alternating treatment design including baseline. The participant was a boy, age 8 years and 10 months, with autistic disorder. To decrease his stereotypic behavior, we approached the sen-sory integration therapy and the contingent exercise. Dependent variables were collected by interval record-ing of video-recording 2 baseline, 10 intervention, 1 generalization while the participant implemented the task. Results : In the intervention, stereotypic behaviors defined to 4 operational definition presented relatively low-er frequency than the baseline observation. Especially, rolling the object with thumb and index finger and watching a object in the hand over a second, revealed relatively higher decrease than other behaviors. In the generalization, the decreased stereotypic behaviors except for watching his hand within a span over a second maintained because of low behavior frequency. Conclusion : The results revealed that the sensory integration therapy and the contingent exercise was ef-fective to decrease the stereotypic behavior in participant. However, the comparison of the effects of the two approaches didn't appear the typically differences.