Computer-Mediated Intervention to Enhance Emotional Competence in Children With Autism in Schools

NCT ID: NCT05902832

Last Updated: 2023-06-15

Study Results

Results pending

The study team has not published outcome measurements, participant flow, or safety data for this trial yet. Check back later for updates.

Basic Information

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Recruitment Status

UNKNOWN

Clinical Phase

NA

Total Enrollment

130 participants

Study Classification

INTERVENTIONAL

Study Start Date

2022-03-01

Study Completion Date

2023-12-01

Brief Summary

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Autism spectrum condition (ASC) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized fundamentally by social deficits. Emotional competence - the ability to express, recognize, understand, and regulate emotions - is a key aspect of social communication. Evidence suggests that the developmental trajectories of autistic children differ from that of neuro-typical children regarding their ability to process and recognize emotions from paralinguistic emotional facial, body language, and voice tone cues. They also have difficulty integrating these cues in context and lack in emotional language.

Numerous approaches to teaching people with autism how to recognize and understand emotions have been tried, with recent increased interest in computer-based interventions (CBI). However, most of the research focused only on facial expressions, were limited to autistic children with no intellectual disabilities (ID); and showed limited generalization to real social settings. EmotiPlay, a computer-based intervention program, designed to enhance emotion recognition (ER) by addressing multiple modalities of emotional cues (facial expressions, tone of voice, body language), has shown good outcome when used at home by autistic children and no ID . However, the examination of generalization was partial and depended only on parental reports.

The present study main goals are to: (1) Examine the adaptation and the integration of EmotiPlay into special education classrooms in regular schools. (2) Assess EmotiPlay's effect on emotional competence among autistic children at different functioning levels.

Detailed Description

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This research is comprised of two main stages:

the first stage is a Pilot, who's main goals are to examine the adaptation and integration of EmotiPlay's intervention to a school setting with autistic children at various ages and levels of functioning, and to test an extended EC battery for EmotiPlay's evaluation.

The pilot includes 5 special education classes that will take part at a short version of the intervention program, and a control group of neurotypical children matched in intellectual and linguistic abilities.

the second stage will include 150 participants, divided into three groups: 60 7-10-year-old autistic children who will participate in the intervention program; 60 7-10-year-old autistic children who will not participate in the intervention; and 30 neuro-typical children matched in cognitive and linguistic skills.

All participant will undergo a pre-assessment tests that include: (1) multi-modal basic and complex ER (2) emotion understanding based on a standardized measure (the Test of Emotion Comprehension - TEC) (3) an emotion definition task (4) a story- telling task (5) an observation of children's prosocial behavior during free-playtime (using the Playground Observation of Peer Engagement - POPE). After evaluations participants will be randomly divided into two groups, the first group will take part in the intervention program and the second will be the control group.

EmotiPlay's intervention program will be administered by a certified educational staff for 18 weeks (36 lessons).

All participant will be evaluated immediately after the intervention; and 15 weeks post-intervention.

The important contribution of this study is twofold. It integrates an intervention program to promote emotional competence into the educational system, which serves as a major platform for acquiring social skills. Concurrently, it offers a way to assess the social functioning in real life situations of children with autism at different levels of functioning.

Conditions

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Autism Spectrum Disorder Intellectual Disability, Mild

Study Design

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Allocation Method

RANDOMIZED

Intervention Model

PARALLEL

participant will be randomly divided to one of two groups: first group will take part in the intervention program and the second will be wait-listed and children will receive treatment as usual
Primary Study Purpose

SUPPORTIVE_CARE

Blinding Strategy

TRIPLE

Participants Caregivers Outcome Assessors

Study Groups

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Experimental group - Autistic children

60 7-10-years-old autistic children, from special education classes integrated in regular schools.

this group will receive EmotiPlay's intervention in the curriculum.

Group Type EXPERIMENTAL

EmotiPlay

Intervention Type BEHAVIORAL

EmotiPlay is a computer-based intervention program, designed to enhance emotion recognition (ER) by addressing multiple modalities of emotional cues (facial expressions, tone of voice, body language),

Control group- Autistic children

60 7-10-years-old autistic children, from special education classes integrated in regular schools.

this group will be wait-listed and receive treatment as usual.

Group Type NO_INTERVENTION

No interventions assigned to this group

Control group-Neurotypical

30 6-10-years-old children, from regular education match in cognitive and linguistic abilities.

Group Type NO_INTERVENTION

No interventions assigned to this group

Interventions

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EmotiPlay

EmotiPlay is a computer-based intervention program, designed to enhance emotion recognition (ER) by addressing multiple modalities of emotional cues (facial expressions, tone of voice, body language),

Intervention Type BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

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Inclusion Criteria

* autism spectrum condition

Exclusion Criteria

* Verbal Intelligence (according to Wechsler) 3 or lower.
Minimum Eligible Age

6 Years

Maximum Eligible Age

11 Years

Eligible Sex

ALL

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Sponsors

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Bar-Ilan University, Israel

OTHER

Sponsor Role lead

Responsible Party

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Ofer Golan

Prof. Ofer Golan

Responsibility Role PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Locations

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Bar Ilan University

Ramat Gan, , Israel

Site Status

Countries

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Israel

References

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Fridenson-Hayo S, Berggren S, Lassalle A, Tal S, Pigat D, Bolte S, Baron-Cohen S, Golan O. Basic and complex emotion recognition in children with autism: cross-cultural findings. Mol Autism. 2016 Dec 19;7:52. doi: 10.1186/s13229-016-0113-9. eCollection 2016.

Reference Type RESULT
PMID: 28018573 (View on PubMed)

Golan O, Baron-Cohen S, Golan Y. The 'Reading the Mind in Films' Task [child version]: complex emotion and mental state recognition in children with and without autism spectrum conditions. J Autism Dev Disord. 2008 Sep;38(8):1534-41. doi: 10.1007/s10803-007-0533-7. Epub 2008 Feb 29.

Reference Type RESULT
PMID: 18311514 (View on PubMed)

Macrostructure, microstructure, and mental state terms in the narratives of English-Hebrew bilingual preschool children with and without specific language impairment. Applied PsychoLinguistics, 37(1), 165-193.

Reference Type RESULT

Other Identifiers

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Bar Ilan University

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id

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