Hunter Mattern¹ (), Lark Caboy¹, Myles Arrington¹, Sumaiya Muhammad¹, Justin Wortman¹, K. Suzanne Scherf¹; ¹Penn State University

Shifts in eye gaze provide non-verbal social communicative information, that is challenging for autistic individual to process. Serious Games for Adolescents with Autism (SAGA) is a intervention that previously showed effectiveness in improving sensitivity to these eye gaze cues in autistic adolescents. Importantly, SAGA was originally tested against a waitlist control. Here, we present data from an ongoing randomized controlled trial (RCT) in which we are evaluating the effectiveness of SAGA2, which includes an active control game. The control game was identical to the intervention game in all respects with one exception; in the intervention game participants view characters portraying non-verbal social communicative behaviors including shifts of eye gaze that can be used to solve narrative-related quests in the game. In the active control game, the characters remain in the scene, but the participants must match objects on a table to target objects presented in a “tv screen.” Levels increased in difficulty by altering the target items (e.g., rotated, partially occluded). Forty-six autistic adolescents (ages 10-18) were randomly assigned to either the intervention or control game for a training period of three months, in which participants were instructed to play the game for 45 minutes, three times a week. Participants in the control condition did not differ from those in the intervention condition in the total number of hours spent playing the game, t(41) = 0.96, p = 0.64. Importantly, they were also comparable to the intervention participants in the number of hours spent engaging specifically in the core tasks of the game (following non-verbal-behavior cues, object-matching), t(41) = 1.37, p = 0.18. The RCT is ongoing; we will present effectiveness data about the intervention that includes tasks of near transfer (understanding eye gaze) and far transfer (face recognition) of learning.

Acknowledgements: Clinical Trial Number: NCT03690661 Funding Info: R33 MH110624 – PI Scherf