Brief Report: Impact of a Physical Exercise Intervention on Emotion Regulation and Behavioral Functioning in Children wi
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BRIEF REPORT
Brief Report: Impact of a Physical Exercise Intervention on Emotion Regulation and Behavioral Functioning in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Andy C. Y. Tse1
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Problems with emotion regulation and behavior are often reported in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). This pilot study examined the effect of physical exercise on emotion regulation and behavioral functioning in children with ASD. Twenty-seven children aged 8–12 years were randomized into either an exercise intervention group (n = 15) or a control group (n = 12). The intervention group received a 12-week jogging intervention. Children’s parents completed the Emotion Regulation Checklist and the Child Behavior Checklist pre- and post-intervention. The intervention group demonstrated significant improvement in emotion regulation and reduction in behavioral problems (ps 0.05). All assumptions were met.
Results Reliability Analysis Cronbach’s alpha showed that the ERC (α = 0.70) and CBCL (α = 0.76) had reached the good reliability.
Emotion Regulation At T1, both ERC-ER and ERC-LN scores were comparable between groups (see Table 2). Repeated-measures ANCOVAs were performed separately for each emotion regulation measure to examine the effects of the physical activity intervention on emotion regulation after controlling for age, gender, and non-verbal IQ. A significant interaction effect (F[1, 22] = 6.89, p = 0.02) was found for ERC-ER. However, no significant interaction effects were found for ERC-LN (F[1, 22] = 2.30, p = 0.14). Subsequent tests revealed a significant increase on ERC-ER between T1 and T2 in the intervention group (t[14] = − 2.47, p = 0.03; effect size d = 0.15) but not in the control group (t[12] = 1.48, p = 0.17; effect size d = 0.10). Comparisons of emotion regulation measures between groups and within groups at different timeslots are shown in Table 2.
Behavioral Functioning As shown in Table 3, all the behavioral functioning measures were comparable between groups. Repeated-measures
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders Table 2 Comparisons of emotion regulation measures between groups and within groups at different timeslots
Emotion regulation measures
Intervention group (SD)
Emotion regulation s ubscalea (ERC-ER) T1 19.87 (3.44) T2 21.53 (2.88) p value (time effect) 0.03 a Emotion regulation lability/negativity (ERC-LN) T1 37.33(3.24) T2 33.40(3.58) p value (time effect) 0.001
Control group (SD)
p value (group effect)
20.53 (2.88) 20.50 (3.32) 0.17
0.56 0.89
38.33(4.05) 36.58(3.92) 0.15
0.48 0.03
p value (interaction effect) 0.02
0.14
a
The analyses were computed after controlling for age, gender and non-verbal IQ
Table 3 Comparisons of T-scores of behavioral functioning measures between groups and within groups at different timeslots
Behavioral functioning Intervention group (SD) measures Internal behavior c ompositea T1 76.80 (3.32) T2 73.07 (2.92) p value (time effect)
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