A systematic review of the effect of sandplay therapy on social communication deficits in children with autism spectrum disorder.

Objective: To explore the efficacy of sandplay therapy in intervening social communication deficits in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and whether this efficacy is influenced by the age of the children and the dosage of sandplay therapy intervention.

Methods: Following the PICOS principle, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) related to sandplay therapy for social communication deficits in ASD children were retrieved from seven databases: PubMed, WOS, The Cochrane Library, Embase, CNKI, Wanfang, and VIP, from the inception of each database to November 10, 2023. Two experimenters independently conducted study screening and excluded studies with concomitant diseases, incomplete data, unextractable data, and non-randomized controlled trials.