SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry
Sec. Autism and Other Neurodevelopmental Disorders
Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frcha.2025.1647280
Effects of Exercise Dosage on Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials
Provisionally accepted
- 1The People's Hospital of Enping, Jiangmen, China
- 2The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, China
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Objective: To investigate the effects of exercise doses recommended by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) on motor skills,social interaction,behavioral patterns, and verbal and non-verbal communication domains in children with autism. Methods: A systematic search was conducted across PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library, focusing on the effects of physical activity on children with autism. Randomized controlled trials comparing exercise interventions with no intervention were included, and changes in motor skills, social interaction, behavioral patterns,and communication domains were assessed using standardized mean differences (SMD), 95% confidence intervals (CI), and p-values (p<0.05).Interventions were categorized based on high or low adherence to exercise prescriptions developed or recommended by ACSM.Studies in Conclusion: Exercise interventions had a significant positive impact on motor skills and behavioral patterns in children with autism spectrum disorder(ASD). Interventions with high adherence to ACSM-recommended exercise dosages were more effective in improving motor skills, social interaction,and behavioral patterns compared to low-adherence dosages.Future evidence-based exercise prescriptions may be established for children with ASD, optimizing motor-functional outcomes.
Keywords: autism 1, Exercise dosage 2, ACSM 3, meta-analysis 4, Children
Received: 17 Jun 2025; Accepted: 11 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hu, Liang and Jiang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Huiyi Jiang, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, China
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