Effects of sensory-motor perception and movement trainings in 2-6 years old children having developmental problems on development area and emotional and behavioral problems

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the effects of sensory-motor perception and movement training on the developmental areas and emotional and behavioral problems of children with neurodevelopmental problems. The sensory-motor perception and movement training program applied in this work focused on the personal and social, fine and gross motor, receptive and expressive language, emotion, and behavior issues of 15 children aged 2 to 6 years consisting of nine children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, three children having Speech Disorder, and three children having General Development Delay. The program was applied for 18 weeks, six days a week and two hours per day, for a total of 216 hours. The Denver-II development scale and the Child Behavior Checklists (separately for ages of 2-3 and 4-6) were used to create the pretest-posttest design. Using these data, the positive impacts of training on development areas as well as emotional and behavioral issues were measured. According to the Wilcoxon signed-rank test results, children's Denver-II development scale and its sub-dimensions' scores after sensory-motor perception and movement training improved significantly (p<0.05). When the pretest and posttest averages of Child Behavior Checklist for children aged 2-3 and 4-6 were compared, internalizing, externalizing, and overall scores decreased significantly after sensory-motor perception and movement training (p<0.05). In conclusion, children with developmental problems aged 2 to 6 who received sensory-motor, perception, and movement training showed significant decrease in anxiety levels, significant reduction in aggressive and destructive behavior, and significant improvement in fine- and gross-motor abilities as well as language and social skills.