During urbanization, individuals with "urban autism" face mental health challenges due to social barriers, while existing social therapies suffer from insufficient cultural adaptability and high participation thresholds. This study employs ethnic traditional sports as a medium to explore the intervention effects of their non-verbal interactive features on the social skills of autism patients, aiming to construct a localized mental health service pathway. Six collective ethnic traditional sports (e.g., the Yi ethnic group’s "Dage" dance, Mongolian "Andai" dance) were selected to design a three-stage intervention program: "movement imitation—rhythm resonance—emotional connection." Twenty-four adolescent autism patients (aged 12–16; 15 males, 9 females) were recruited and randomly divided into an experimental group (n=12) and a control group (n=12). An 8-week intervention (3 sessions/week, 45 minutes/session) was conducted. Mixed methods were applied: quantitative analysis of social behavior indicators (e.g., frequency of proactive interactions, duration of eye contact) and qualitative interviews recording participants’ subjective experiences. Paired-sample t-tests (significance level p < 0.05) were performed using SPSS 26.0, and thematic coding was conducted via NVivo 12. Post-intervention, the experimental group showed a 42% increase in proactive interaction frequency (t=3.21, p=0.006) and a 35% rise in eye contact duration (t=2.89, p=0.013). Qualitative analysis revealed that ritualized movements reduced anxiety levels (83% mention rate), while repetitive rhythms provided emotional "safe anchors" (76% mention rate). The control group exhibited no significant changes. A typical case indicated that 9 patients in the experimental group achieved peer acceptance, with a 67% reduction in social avoidance behaviors. This study validates the effectiveness of ethnic traditional sports in improving social skills among autism patients through the "body narrative—cultural identity—social reconstruction" pathway. Their non-verbal interaction patterns bypass language barriers and foster emotional bonds, offering a novel paradigm for localized interventions. It is recommended to integrate traditional sports into mental health service systems and further explore their integration with modern technologies.
Jia et al. (Thu,) studied this question.