A Lead-in Study Evaluating Efficacy of GuessWhat Mobile App Therapy for Children With Autism

Stanford University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Autism Spectrum Disorder; Autism

Treatments: Device: GuessWhat Mobile App

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; NIH

Identifiers

NCT04739982

60181

5R01LM013364-03 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Details and patient eligibility

About

The following study aims to assess the efficacy, safety data, and best outcome measurements of the mobile game platform, GuessWhat, in delivering behavioral therapy to children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). GuessWhat is a mobile application (available for free for iOS and Android) which contains a suite of games: pro-social charades, emotion guessing, and quiz. Participant families will use their personal smartphones to download the app and play it with their child according to a predetermined regimen.

Full description

The following study aims to understand the efficacy and safety of the mobile game platform, GuessWhat, in delivering behavioral therapy to children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). GuessWhat is a mobile application (available for free for iOS and Android) which contains a suite of games: pro-social charades, emotion guessing, and quiz. Participant families will use their personal smartphones to download the app and play it with their child according to a predetermined regimen. The study will enroll parents who are at least 18 years old and have a child between 3 and 12 years old with a formal ASD diagnosis. Parents will be asked to complete two clinical outcome measure questionnaires immediately prior to and up to 1 week after playing GuessWhat with their child 3 times per week for 4 weeks.

Enrollment: 541 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 3 to 12 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

1. Parent who is at least 18 years old of child with autism.
2. Child with autism is between 3 and 12 years old at time of baseline data collection.

Exclusion criteria

1. Parent is unable to read English.
2. Parent does not have an Android or iOS smartphone compatible with GuessWhat App--the app will be available on Android after further development and we will notify interested families when it becomes available.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Other

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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541 participants in 2 patient groups

Treatment

Experimental group

Description:

The GuessWhat app is a charades style game and app that engages parent and child in fluid social interaction where the parent must guess what the child is acting out based on the prompt shown on the phone screen. Participants will use their own personal phone to download the study app. Parent and child will be encouraged to play using the emojis and emotion game mode at least 3 individual game sessions per week. Parents are asked to play GuessWhat with their child 3-4 times per week for 4 weeks.

Treatment:

Device: GuessWhat Mobile App

Treatment as Usual

No Intervention group

Description:

Participants in control group will continue their treatment as usual.