Evaluating Efficacy of a Digital Game Therapeutic for Children With Autism

Evaluating Efficacy of a Digital Game Based Therapeutic for Improving Socialization Outcomes in Autistic Children, A Randomized Clinical Trial.

The following study aims to assess the efficacy of the game-based digital therapeutic, GuessWhat, in improving adaptive socialization skills in 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 following study aims to understand the efficacy of the digital therapeutic, GuessWhat, in improving socialization outcomes in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) after regular use over 8 weeks. We will use a cross-over, waitlist control design to examine outcomes after 8 weeks. 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 8 weeks.

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.
3. A professional diagnosis of Autism that is able to be confirmed by negative score on a machine learning based algorithm using items from Mobile Autism Risk Assessment and video based classifier or by a copy of diagnostic report.

Exclusion Criteria:

1. Parent is unable to read the app in the offered languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese)
2. Parent does not have an Android or iOS smartphone compatible with GuessWhat App.
3. Child has additional psychiatric or neurologic diagnoses including genetic syndromes or epilepsy in addition to autism.