Exploring the Performance of Self-care and Visual Perception in Preschool Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

Self-care is a basic occupation of preschool children as well as their foundation for the development of various occupations Visual perception is a performance skill of performing self-care and also an important development task in preschool period According to Gibson’s theory of affordances children who can perform self-care tasks appropriately should perceive contexts information through visual perception correctly It indicates that there were relationships between self-care and visual perception and that was especially important to preschool children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who had been described as visual learners However the performance of self-care and visual perception and their relationships have not been clearly understood among preschool children with ASD Previous studies collected information about the self-care in groups of ASD mainly from single viewpoint evaluations; visual perception had been assessed through only motor-free or visual-motor integration instruments as well This study focused on examining the performance of self-care and visual perception in preschool children with ASD In addition investigating the relationships between self-care and visual perception through the performances of the child the viewpoints of caregiver and therapist’s evaluation was one of the research purposes Both motor-free visual perception and visual-motor integration evaluation tools for preschool children with ASD were used A total of 132 participants aged 48 to 83 months were recruited: 66 preschool children with ASD and 66 typically developing (TD) preschool children The Assessment of Motor and Process Skills (AMPS) and Chinese Version of Pediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory (PEDI-C) were used to measure the self-care performance of preschool children through the performances of the children the viewpoints of caregivers and therapist’s evaluation The Developmental Test of Visual Perception – Third Edition (DTVP-3) and Test of Visual-Perceptual Skills - Third Edition (TVPS-3) were used to evaluate visual perception Independent t-tests were used to analyze the difference of performance between the two groups Pearson correlation coefficients were used to examine the relationship between self-care and visual perception in preschool children with ASD Results indicated that there were significant differences between the two groups of children in AMPS PEDI-C TVPS-3 and DTVP-3 with the exception of visual closure Mean scores of children with ASD were less than those of TD children Among children with ASD the scores of AMPS had significant positive correlations with TVPS-3 total score discrimination visual memory spatial relationships sequential memory DTVP-3 VMI composite score eye-hand coordination and copying PEDI-C functional ability score was significantly associated with the scores of DTVP-3 Significant positive correlations existed between PEDI-C caregiver assistance score and TVPS-3 total score and discrimination Through this study a further understanding of the self-care and visual perception among preschool children with ASD were established Understanding the relationship between self-care and visual perception in preschool children with ASD could also provide professionals as references when providing self-care interventions for preschool children with ASD

Date of Award	2020
Original language	English
Supervisor	Ling-Yi Lin (Supervisor)