Thursday, July 4, 2013

Xbox engagement and children with Autism

Design: Repeated-measures study
Exploring motion-based touchless games for Autistic children’s learning
Bartoli, L., Corradi, C., Garzotto, F. & Valoriani, M. Proceedings of Interaction Design and Children (IDC) conference, June 24 – 27, 2013, New York, NY, USA

Link to abstract... http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2485774

Objective: Do children with autism increase in selective and sustained attention after motion-based video game play?

Method: A convenience sample of five 10 – 12 year old autistic boys were selected from a larger group of children at a therapeutic centre in Florence, Italy. The boys attended five “gaming meetings” of 45 minutes gameplay over a period of three months. Five Kinect Xbox 360 games were chosen in order to present the boys with a variety of short games with graded tasks. The Bells test for visual neglect, used here to measure attention, was administered before, during and one week after the treatment regime.

Results: Children showed increased selective and sustained attention up to seven days following the end of treatment sessions. These results “are in line with existing studies concerning the positive effects of motion-based games on engagement”.