Clinical trial · Interventional
Computer-Mediated Intervention to Enhance Emotional Competence in Children With Autism in Schools
- Source
- ClinicalTrials.gov
- Retrieved
- Sep 8, 2026
- Layer
- normalized (units and labels harmonized; values unchanged)
- Run
- ING-CLINICALTRIALS-20260908-000001
Summary
Brief summary (as posted)
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.
Conditions
Conditions (2)
Free-text conditions as registered, with the CancerIndex entity they were reconciled to and the match type.
| Condition (as posted) | Mapped entity | Match | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Autism Spectrum Disorder | — | UNRESOLVED | — |
| Intellectual Disability, Mild | — | UNRESOLVED | — |
Interventions
Interventions (1)
| Intervention | Type | Mapped drug | Match |
|---|---|---|---|
| EmotiPlay | Behavioral | — | UNRESOLVED |
Design
Arms and outcomes
Arms (3)
- type
- EXPERIMENTAL
- label
- Experimental group - Autistic children
- description
- 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.
- interventionNames
- Behavioral: EmotiPlay
- type
- NO_INTERVENTION
- label
- Control group- Autistic children
- description
- 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.
- type
- NO_INTERVENTION
- label
- Control group-Neurotypical
- description
- 30 6-10-years-old children, from regular education match in cognitive and linguistic abilities.
Eligibility
Eligibility (as posted)
- Sex
- All
- Minimum age
- 6 Years
- Maximum age
- 11 Years
Show eligibility criteria text
Inclusion Criteria: * autism spectrum condition Exclusion Criteria: * Verbal Intelligence (according to Wechsler) 3 or lower.
References
Publications (3)
- RESULTFridenson-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. PMID 28018573
- RESULTGolan 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. PMID 18311514
- RESULTMacrostructure, 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.