Background and Purpose: The occurrence of autism spectrum disorder causes severe deficits in social skills, cognitive and psychological functions of children. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of emotional regulation training on social cognition and executive functions in children with autism spectrum disorder.
Method: The research method was experimental with pre-test-post-test design with control group. The statistical population of the study included all children with autism spectrum in Isfahan in 2016. For this purpose, 30 children with autism were selected by convenient sampling and assigned into two experimental and control groups randomly (each group 15). The experimental group received emotion regulation training in 9 sessions (Every week 2 sessions for 60 minutes), while the control group did not receive training. All subjects completed Nero psychological test (Abedi and Malekpour, 2010) and the task set of the theory of mind (Hutchins, Prelock & Chace, 2008) before and after the training. To analyze the data, covariance analysis was used.
Results: The analysis of the data showed that emotional regulation training resulted in a significant increase in the components of social cognition and executive functions (score, time and error) in children with autism spectrum disorder (P < 0.05).
Conclusion: According to the findings of this study, emotional regulation can be used to improve social cognitive and metacognitive skills of children with autism spectrum disorder.