Thesis:

The effectiveness of art therapy on emotional behavior and sensation seeking in 7-12 year old autistic children in Sabzevar city

The present study was conducted with the aim of investigating the effectiveness of art therapy on emotional behavior and sensation seeking in 7-12 year old autistic children in Sabzevar city. This research was a semi-experimental method with a pre-test-post-test with an unequal control group. The statistical population of the research included all autistic children of Sabzevar who are studying in the exceptional school of Sabzevar and were willing to cooperate. According to the statistics of the center, the number of these children was 73 students aged 7-12, of which 30 children were chosen voluntarily who were willing to cooperate. After being justified, this number of children were randomly divided into two groups of 15 people. One group was given art therapy training based on the Oxline approach in 8 45-minute training sessions, and the other group was not trained. Then a comparison was made between these two groups. The data collection tools were the Emotional Behavior Questionnaire of Shields et al. 1992 and the Questionnaire of Emotion Regulation Strategies by Gross and John 2003. Descriptive and inferential statistics methods were used for data analysis using Spss version 24 software. Descriptive statistics method has been used to examine and compare the mean and standard deviation of the variables in the control and experimental groups, and inferential statistics have been used to analyze the research assumptions, which include the Kolmogorov-Smironov tests to check the normality of the research variables and the assumptions of the analysis of covariance and It is an analysis of covariance test. The results showed that the F score obtained for the emotional involvement scores was equal to 14.545, which was significant at the 0.001 level, and its effect size was equal to 0.342, and the F value obtained for the criticism scores was The reception was equal to 25.021, which is significant at the 0.001 level, and its effect size was equal to 0.472, and the obtained F value was equal to 67.92 and significant at the 0.001 level. and its effect size or the effectiveness of art therapy on sensation seeking was equal to 0.716, which can be concluded from the comparison of the effect size of the relevant variables that art therapy training has improved emotional behavior and sensation seeking

Keywords: art therapy, emotional behavior, sensation seeking, autistic children