Can Computer-Assisted Training of Prerequisite Motor Skills Help Enable Communication in People with Autism?

Our and others' research indicates that in fully a third of people with autism who lack communicative speech, the communication deficit may actually be a deficit in motor skills necessary to move the mouth and the vocal tract. These individuals have difficulties in fine, gross and especially oral motor skills, and a disparity between impaired expressive language and relatively intact receptive language: that is to say, they can listen but not speak. Because involvement in research and receipt of the fullest educational, occupational and other services demands ability to interact verbally and to control one's movements and actions, these people get the short end of the stick when it comes to scientific enquiry and pedagogic and therapeutic practice. Point OutWords, tablet-based software designed in collaboration with autistic clients and their communication therapists, exploits the autistic fascination with parts and details to motivate attention to learning manual motor and oral motor skills essential for communication. Along the way, autistic clients practise pointing and dragging at objects, then pointing at sequences of letters on a keyboard, and even speaking the syllables represented by these letters. Whereas many teaching and learning strategies adapted from methods for non-autistic people end up working against autistic cognition by asking people with autism to do what they cannot easily do, Point OutWords works with autistic cognition, by beginning from the autistic skill at manipulating parts and details. Users and their parents or guardians can opt into collection of data on motor interactions with Point OutWords; these internal measures of motor skills development are complemented by external, standardised tests of motor, oral motor and communicative development. These quantitative measures are collected alongside reports on Point OutWords's acceptability to users, and users' fidelity to a recommended treatment regime, so as to evaluate feasibility of a larger randomised controlled trial

Digital games for people with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD): a systematic review

Individuos com transtornos do espectro do autismo (TEA) possuem desenvolvimento atipico nas areas cognitiva ou de aprendizagem, comunicacao e interacao social, deteccao e trato de emocoes, coordenacao motora e concentracao. O desenvolvimento de tecnologias assistivas e fundamental para melhorar a qualidade de vida destes individuos. Este estudo faz uma revisao sistematica da literatura com foco em jogos digitais usados como tecnologias assistivas para individuos com TEA. Fazendo uso da base digital IEEE Xplore, foram pesquisados estudos que continham o termo game em conjunto com termos relacionados ao TEA. A partir da busca foram encontradas 193 ocorrencias do conjunto de termos. Os artigos foram lidos e analisados, sendo selecionados os estudos que tratam de jogos digitais com foco em individuos com TEA. Foram excluidos da selecao jogos que fazem uso unicamente de hardwares especificos e que nao apresentam funcao de tecnología assistiva. Como resultado final deste estudo foram selecionados 62 artigos neste contexto, sendo que todos apresentam resultados positivos quanto ao uso dos jogos digitais na melhoria das capacidades das pessoas com TEA. Desta forma, e possivel verificar a consistencia de tal abordagem, encorajando a continuidade das pesquisas e do desenvolvimento de jogos digitais com foco em tecnología assistiva para pessoas com TEA.Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have atypical development in the areas of cognition or learning, communication and social interaction, detection and treatment of emotions, motor coordination and concentration. The development of assistive technologies is critical because they help to better the quality of life of these individuals. This study makes a systematic review of the literature focusing on digital games used as assistive technologies for individuals with ASD. Using the IEEE Xplore digital base, studies were conducted that contained the term "game" in conjunction with terms related to ASD. From the search were found 193 occurrences of the set of terms were found. The articles were read and analyzed, being the studies that deal with digital games focused on individuals with ASD. Games that only use specific hardware and not have the function of assistive technology were excluded from the selection. As a final result of this study, 62 articles were selected in this context, all of which present positive results regarding the use of digital games in improving the abilities of people with ASD. In this way, it is possible to verify the consistency of such an approach, encouraging the continuity of research and the development of digital games with a focus on assistive technology for people with ASD.Facultad de Informátic

A tablet computer-assisted motor and language skills training programme to promote communication development in children with autism: development and pilot study

Autism is a heterogenous condition, encompassing many different subtypes and presentations. Of those people with autism who lack communicative speech, some are more skilled at receptive language than their expressive difficulty might suggest. This disparity between what can be spoken and what can be understood correlates with motor and especially oral motor abilities, and thus may be a consequence of limits to oral motor skill. Point OutWords, tablet-based software targeted for this subgroup, builds on autistic perceptual and cognitive strengths to develop manual motor and oral motor skills prerequisite to communication by pointing or speaking. Although typical implementations of user-centred design rely on communicative speech, Point OutWords users were involved as co-creators both directly via their own nonverbal behavioural choices and indirectly via their communication therapists’ reports; resulting features include vectorised, high-contrast graphics, exogenous cues to help capture and maintain attention, customisable reinforcement prompts, and accommodation of open-loop visuomotor control