Abstract:

The current study is aimed at investigating the effect of an innovative technological intervention program combining meta-cognitive regulation skills, on making eye contact among children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) with normal IQ (>85). People with ASD present difficulties in communication and social interactions, and in behavioral patterns. One of the symptoms affecting people with ASD is difficulty in making eye contact. Meta-cognition refers to a person’s ability to think about his/her own thoughts. One of its components is "meta-cognitive regulation", meaning the ability to regulate cognitive processes using three skills: Planning, Monitoring and Control, and Evaluation. The current study implements these meta-cognitive skills in a technological environment, in order to promote eye contact among children with ASD. A number of recent studies examined the efficiency of using assistive technology for promoting eye contact among children and adolescents with ASD. They found significant improvements in various measures of eye contact (e.g., latency, duration, frequency, etc.). A significant contribution of meta-cognition to the prediction of children with ASD social skills is documented in the literature. According to these reports, the study's goal was to explore the impact of a combined- implemented meta-cognitive guidance in a computerized intervention on children with ASD's ability to make eye contact. Eighteen boys with ASD (IQ>85), ages 5-9, participated in this study. All attended first-grade special education or kindergarten, integrated in mainstream education settings. They were randomly assigned into two computerize intervention groups, with or without meta-cognitive guidance. We used a computer game called C-Me, adjusted for children with special needs aged > 5 years old, that includes four cartoon characters. The purpose of the game is to make direct eye contact with each character. During the game, the character asks the children to look it in the eyes so it can complete a task or solve a problem. While playing, each screen in the game is divided into eight areas: face, eyes, and six additional areas on the screen. For each area, the software provides the following data: eye-contact duration for each area (in percentage), and total gaze time (the cumulated time in seconds in which the child focused his gaze in all areas on the screen from the beginning until the end of the game). As mentioned, two interventions were activated—with or without meta-cognitive guidance—both were identical, apart from the specific metacognitive guidance. The intervention program was held twice a week for six 30- minute sessions. The first and the sixth meetings were dedicated to measuring the children’s eye contact performances pre- and post-intervention. Meetings two to five had the children play with their choice of either of the three other characters. A non-parametric analysis suitable for a small sample size was performed in order to examine the effect of the intervention. According to the results, the technological intervention was found to be effective among all participants. Specifically, a comparison between the two intervention groups found that the meta-cognitive group was outperformed the non-metacognitive group in making eye contact. Moreover, the participants within the metacognitive intervention group improved their ability to make eye contact significantly following the intervention.

Keywords:

Autism Spectrum Disorder, Meta-cognitive skills, Assistive Technology, Eye-contact.