Digital Technology Intervention Treatment Strategies for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) exhibit social communication, sensory, cognitive, behavioral, and motor challenges that impact their ability to participate within school/community environments. Often children with ASD receive sedentary therapies addressing communication, cognition, behavior, and fine motor challenges, but few children receive PT to address their gross motor impairments. Growing evidence has reported positive motor/multisystem effects of technology-based and creative movement interventions for children with ASD. Post-pandemic, clinicians have embraced technologies to provide motor/multisystem interventions to children with ASD. The real-world/community implementation of evidence-based movement interventions is greatly limited due to the cost associated with participation and because children exhibit waning interest over time which further limits their continued participation.
We propose using low-cost and highly engaging digital technology protocols using off-the-shelf exergaming tools to promote improvement in balance, coordination, strength, and activity levels for children with ASD. In this session, we will provide an overview of impairments in ASD, describe fundamental reasons for using technology as a treatment tool, describe the recent evidence supporting the incorporation of technology into motor interventions, and inform clinicians training protocol development using exergames. We will begin with a PowerPoint presentation and later discuss exemplar video recordings involving children with varying abilities to demonstrate how we used the Nintendo Switch to promote multiple social, motor, and cognitive skills. Finally, stakeholder feedback demonstrating that our protocol is feasible, highly engaging, and low-cost will be presented. Clinicians will leave with knowledge and skills to develop their own technology-based intervention tailored to their client’s needs.