Gaming for Autism to Mold Executive Skills Project — GAMES  

Autism Spectrum Disorders Clinical Trial

Official title: Electrophysiological Response to Executive Control Training

Status Completed

Clinical Trial 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.

Clinical Trial 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. ;

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Autism Spectrum Disorder
• Autism Spectrum Disorders

• NCT number: NCT02361762
• Study type: Interventional
• Source: Boston Children's Hospital
• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: February 2015
• Completion date: November 2017