RCT in California Elementary School (N=31)

• Emotion Recognition (Nepsy II)
• Theory of Mind (Nepsy II)
• Social Validity (Teacher SRS)
• Blinded Playground Observations (Hauk, et al)

This neat RCT was conducted by a School Psychologist in 5 elementary schools with K-5th grade students with normal IQ and a school diagnosis of autism (not ADOS or CARS).  As I expected, with a lower dose (once a week), and more challenging interaction partners (neurotypical children, rather than other children on the spectrum as in Hopkins), the playground measures were null.  The Teacher SRS was trending, but not significant.   Both the Emotion Recognition and Theory of Mind measures were significant.   Please click here to read the full paper if you have time.

Abstract

This study assessed the efficacy of FaceSay, a computer-based social skills training program for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). This randomized controlled study (N = 49) indicates that providing children with low-functioning autism (LFA) and high functioning autism (HFA) opportunities to practice attending to eye gaze, discriminating facial expressions and recognizing faces and emotions in FaceSay’s structured environment with interactive, realistic avatar assistants improved their social skills abilities. The children with LFA demonstrated improvements in two areas of the intervention: emotion recognition and social interactions. The children withHFAdemonstrated improvements in all three areas: facial recognition, emotion recognition, and social interactions. These findings, particularly the measured improvements to social interactions in a natural environment, are encouraging.