NCT02361762

Gaming for Autism to Mold Executive Skills Project

Electrophysiological Response to Executive Control Training

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 70 (actual)
• Sponsor: Boston Children's Hospital · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 7 Years – 11 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

The goal of the project is to better understand executive control-how children manage complex or conflicting information in the service of a goal. This skill has been linked to social and academic functioning in typically developing children. Executive control is often reduced in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but it has not been a focus of treatment. This project will have the goal of determining whether computer-training tasks developed to enhance the executive control skills of preschoolers and school-aged children without autism are appropriate for children with ASD. The investigators do not yet know if this training is beneficial for children with ASD. In addition, because executive control has been found to relate to social knowledge and problem solving, the investigators will collect information with this type of task to measure possible effects of training.

Detailed description

Participation will include two phone calls to determine if the study is a good fit and collect some preliminary information, five visits to Boston Children's Hospital (3 before training and 2 about 6-8 weeks later), caregiver questionnaires, and an optional teacher questionnaire packet. The visits will include activities designed to assess verbal and nonverbal thinking ability; social skills and general interests; and specific tasks related to cognitive and social problem solving. In addition, EEG measurement of brain function will be made. EEG is a non-invasive recording of brain activity. Children will be randomly assigned (i.e., like flipping a coin) to receive training or to a non-training group. The training group will complete tasks designed to improve executive control presented over the course of 5-10 1-hour sessions. All tasks are game-like and are presented on a computer with child friendly graphics. A staff member will work with each child as he/she completes the training activities. Children assigned to the non-training group will be invited to participate in training at the end of the study if it is shown to improve executive control.

Conditions

• Autism Spectrum Disorders

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Computerized executive control training	Children will play computerized training games designed to improve executive control skills. Each training activity is structured to achieve a particular type of training related to executive control and/or attention shifting. Sessions last for 1 hour each and the intensity of intervention ranges from 5-10 hours. Children will receive training until all levels of all tasks have been passed or 10 hours, whichever happens first. All training exercises have a number of levels, and children progress to the next level by meeting specific criteria for accuracy and/or speed. A trainer will be present during all sessions to help children comply with the training demands and to teach skills involved in completing challenging tasks.

Timeline

• Start date: 2015-02-01
• Primary completion: 2017-11-01
• Completion: 2017-11-01
• First posted: 2015-02-12
• Last updated: 2021-07-28
• Results posted: 2019-02-20

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States