The Effectiveness of a Treatment Program Based on Audio-Visual Entrainment Technology in Improving Self-regulation in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

The current research aims to identify the effectiveness of an existing treatment program using audio-visual entrainment technology in improving self-regulation among children with high functioning autism spectrum disorder who were previously diagnosed in autism care centers in the Baghdad city, on both sides of Karkh and Rusafa. The pre-test was applied to the research sample. (14) children, (7) experimental group (5) males and (2) females, and (7) control group (6) males and (1) females, then applying the program to the experimental sample, which continued for three months. There are (36) sessions, each week (3) sessions, the session lasts for (21) days. The researcher prepared a self-regulation scale and verified the psychometric properties, validity and reliability. After the end of the program period, the post-test was applied to the experimental and control groups. The results of the research showed there are statistically significant differences between the scores of the pre-test and post-test on the self-regulation scale for the experimental and control groups and in favor of the experimental group. This indicates that the audio-visual entrainment technique has contributed to improving self-regulation among the research sample. Then the follow-up test was applied two months after the end of the test. The results showed the continued effectiveness of the technique, also a number of recommendations and suggestions about the research results are presented.