Effects of physical exercise on autism spectrum disorders: a meta-analysis

Bibliographic items: Sowa M, Meulenbroek R. Effects of exercise on autistic spectrum disorders: meta-analysis. Autism Spectrum Disorder Research 2012; 6 (1): 46-57. It is available at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1750946711001516.

Regular exercise is widely believed to promote physical and mental health, but what are the benefits of ASD patients? The meta-analysis evaluated 16 behavioral studies of 133 children and adults of various atypical syndromes who underwent structural physical activity in an individual or group environment. The impact on social and movement disorders (two of the three main symptom groups of ASD) was normalized to provide quantitative assessment. Results on communication defects are insufficient for classification. All activity plans have made significant progress in evaluating measurements, but individual plans have made a greater improvement than exercise group intervention, and even more surprisingly in the social field.

The current analysis will help you gain insight into the impact of physical activity on autistic spectrum disorder patients. 16 studies describe exercise-based interventions with prospective and promising effects reported in 2 domains out of 3 core symptoms: movement disorders and social disorders. Results on communication skills are inadequate for systematic evaluation. As expected, our analysis of movement variables has a big positive impact on the interventions provided by individuals. Surprisingly, although to a lesser extent, it also applies to social skills, thus denying our hypothesis that group-based exercise programs will be more effective in this symptom domain. The consequences contrary to this intuition may be due to differences in concepts. The definition of "collective intervention" in the literature is broader than the definition of "personal intervention".