Toothbrushing is a routine practice for oral hygiene maintenance. It is also a challenging task for young children with special care needs. In this study, social stories were employed to teach toothbrushing skills for preschool children with special needs. Those children were recruited from the Special Child Care Centers, including 87 children with autism and 94 children without autism. A validated toothbrushing social story was used to demonstrate the toothbrushing procedure for all the recruited children. Parents were encouraged to show the stories to their children before or during their daily toothbrushing. Children's toothbrushing performance, oral hygiene status, and gingival health status were assessed at baseline and 6 months. Toothbrushing performance, oral hygiene, and gingival status of the recruited children were significantly improved after using social stories. Moreover, children with autism showed better oral hygiene status (P = 0.01) and better gingival status (P < 0.001) than their peers without autism. However, there were no significant differences in the toothbrushing performance among children with and without autism. The regression models indicated that the improvement of children's toothbrushing performance and oral health status were associated with children's intellectual functioning and parents' attitudes toward the usefulness of social story intervention. The principal findings suggested that social story intervention could be used to improve toothbrushing skills among children with or without autism, while it was more efficient in improving the oral hygiene status among children with autism. Autism Res 2020, 13: 666–674. © 2019 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

中文翻译：

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社会故事干预在有自闭症和无自闭症的特殊护理儿童中培训牙刷技巧的功效。

刷牙是口腔卫生的常规做法。对于有特殊照顾需求的幼儿来说，这也是一项艰巨的任务。在这项研究中，社交故事被用来为有特殊需要的学龄前儿童教授牙刷技巧。这些儿童是从特殊儿童保育中心招募的，其中包括87名自闭症儿童和94名无自闭症儿童。一个经过验证的牙刷社交故事被用来演示所有招募儿童的牙刷程序。鼓励父母在每天刷牙之前或期间向孩子们讲故事。在基线和6个月时评估儿童的牙刷性能，口腔卫生状况和牙龈健康状况。牙刷性能，口腔卫生，使用社交故事后，被招募儿童的牙龈状况得到了显着改善。此外，自闭症儿童的口腔卫生状况更好（P = 0.01）和 比没有自闭症的同伴更好的牙龈状态（P <0.001）。但是，有自闭症的儿童和没有自闭症的儿童的牙刷性能没有显着差异。回归模型表明，儿童牙刷性能和口腔健康状况的改善与儿童的智力功能以及父母对社交故事干预的有用态度有关。主要研究结果表明，社交故事干预可用于提高有或没有自闭症儿童的刷牙技巧，而在改善自闭症儿童的口腔卫生状况方面更为有效。自闭症研究2020，13：666-674。©2019国际自闭症研究会，Wiley Periodicals，Inc.