Speakers
Description
The anxiety associated with public locker rooms have proven to be one of the most substantive barriers to engagement in sport and physical exercise for people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (Haegele & Maher, 2022). However, little is known about existing and/or potential accommodations to help improve the locker room experience for people with ASD. This presents a troubling dichotomy: On the one hand, both strength and endurance exercise has been shown to generate improvements for persons with ASD in terms of regulating their emotions and reducing episodes of aggression and rage (Sowa & Meulenbroek, 2012; Tse, 2020). On the other hand, the unpredictability of locker rooms (e.g., new people, nude bodies, uncertainty about locker availability, etc.) renders engaging in regular physical activity exceedingly difficult for persons with ASD (Dowdy & Tincani, 2020), especially for those without the luxury of a home gym or other resources to help relieve this situational anxiety. This presentation focuses on a significant barrier to physical activity for people with ASD: the locker room. We explore the following two research questions: 1) What barriers exist within the locker room for people with ASD? 2) What adaptive measures might be implemented to help improve the locker room experience for people with ASD? Our primary methodology for this study consisted of a formal scoping review of existing literature on locker rooms, ASD, and environmental adaptations following the six-step framework laid out by Arksey and O’Malley (2005)—the gold standard in scoping review methodologies.
