Therapist-Led Gross Motor Interventions and Multiple Outcomes in Autism: A Systematic Review and Quality Assessment

This systematic review aims to assess the quality of evidence on gross motor skills interventions for autistic children aged 2–8 years. The review followed PRISMA guidelines. The Reichow framework was chosen to assess research quality due to its suitability for autism intervention research and its applicability to both group-design and single-case investigations. The review included seven studies involving 52 autistic children aged three to seven years. The studies found improvements in academic engagement, reduced stereotypic behaviour, improved task engagement, peer interaction, and functional communication. However, no study met the criteria for “established” or “promising” evidence-based procedures due to lack of blind raters, inadequate intervention fidelity assessments procedures, small sample sizes, insufficient experimental control and social validity, limiting the protocols’ generalization, reliability and applicability. While therapist-led gross motor interventions demonstrated preliminary positive indicator in other developmental domains for autistic children, the current evidence is insufficient to support their widespread endorsement as evidence-based practice for enhancing other developmental domains by the age of 3. These findings may guide therapists and educators to report socially relevant, larger, rigorous controlled trials with robust fidelity and blinded outcome evaluation in order to build groundwork evidence-base for organized motor supports into developmental intervention programs for autistic children.