Improving Daily Living Skills in People With Autism Spectrum Disorder Through a Personalised Serious Game

Federico II University

Status

Unknown

Conditions

Autism Spectrum Disorder

Treatments

Other: Serious Game ShopAut

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT04295746

9820

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study evaluates the efficacy of a rehabilitation intervention for people with Autism Spectrum Disorder through an individualised serious game developed for improving skills related to a specific daily living activity: shopping in a supermarket.

Full description

Serious games are innovative computer-based interventions to support children and adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, few studies have assessed the efficacy of these interventions in real-life contexts. The present study investigates the generalisation of daily living skills related to shopping activities after a rehabilitation intervention administered via a personalised serious game (ShopAut). The underlying hypothesis of this study is that training with an individualised serious game can improve performance in a real-life environment. In order to prove this hypothesis, a small sample of subjects with ASD will play an individualised serious game, ShopAut, for ten sessions. Subjects will undergo real-life experiences in a supermarket pre- and post-virtual training to determine whether there had been a generalisation of skills from the virtual environment to the real environment. Improvements in skills and performance in the real shopping activity are evaluated using specific tools.

The serious game ShopAut is developed integrating an individualised design that provides both the personalisation of the game's scenario, contents, difficulty, and user interface; and the customisation of game modes, player perspectives, and input devices. It is a three-dimensional game that provides a realistic shopping experience where the player can practice and engage with, above all, shopping activities, experiment their problem-solving skills, and take on unexpected events.

Enrollment

10 estimated patients

Sex

All

Ages

8 to 16 years old

Volunteers

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

clinical diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder, in keeping with the diagnostic criteria of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-V)
chronological age between 8 and 16 years
a rehabilitation plan already underway in accordance with the study's goals
Representatives of parental authority who gave informed written consent
native Italian speakers

Exclusion criteria

no physical impairments
participant to another research protocol
known organic syndrome and/or non-stabilized neuropediatric (e.g. seizures) or medical (e.g. diabetes mellitus) comorbidities