Praise is a Strong Weapon to Motivate Young Autism-affected Individuals to Exercise

Praise your Child-It can Do Wonders on His/her Performance

Exercise seems to be the savior for all kinds of diseases and ailments except for a few genetically inherent diseases that cannot be prevented but only contained. Autism is not an illness or disease and hence there is no cure for it. It is a developmental disability that changes the way in which the affected person sees the world, communicates with others and carries on day-to-day activities forever. This condition prevents the affected individuals from exercising as they grow up compared to their normal peers. This puts them at a greater risk of obesity, depression and diabetes. Do you know that there are more boys compared to girls affected by autism? For the various theories surrounding this hypothesis please visit the website www.firsteatright.com.

Exercise as a Way of Life

Exercise promotes good health and a fitter body for individuals in general, but it can be a great savoir for people with autism too. This brings on the overpowering need of inculcating the practice of exercising in people with autism. A team of researchers went about thinking ways to do the same using the technique of positive reinforcement. They tried to support this by praising and focusing on how the praise was delivered-by person or by technology. Technology is dominating the world including physical activity and the study group were curious to find out whether technology use would benefit or disrupt practice of exercise and which was the condition preferred by participants too.

The research team tried their study on three young adults aged between 20 and 22 monitoring their progress through many sessions under different conditions. In one case when the participants were running around cones they received statements of encouragements via a person standing in front of them or through the headphones (but the voice was same) in different time frames. Irrespective of whether the participants heard the voice through the person or headphones their number of laps increased when they heard the praise. Participants who performed well when they heard voices through headphones continued to maintain their performance irrespective of the narrow down of praise statements. Youngsters are very much connected to the latest technology, gadgets and iPods. Using any of these for support helps make autistic individuals feel independent too. Finally, using technology saves ample time and manpower. It takes only a couple of minutes to record the praise for the first time and there is no further work involved beyond this. All the more, it can be used repeatedly any number of times.

So, even if there are not many people to motivate an autistic individual all they can do is at least use technology to play recorded messages of praise. All of us love motivation and encouragement and autism-affected individuals are no different. A simple phrase of praise or a word of appreciation can do wonders on the individual.