New Autism App Gives Kids
Ability to Learn and Parents
Means to Track Progress
For many children with autism, going to camp may never happen because of the challenges having autism can bring, including learning. But now, going to camp has a whole new meaning.
The Center for Autism and Related Disorders (CARD), one of the world’s largest providers of applied behavior analysis (ABA) therapy, has created Camp Discovery, an app with unique features to increase the learning of children with autism spectrum disorder. The Camp Discovery app teaches over 50 common household and community objects to children through a series of various levels. Children will match identical objects, similar objects, and comprehend object names.
For correct responses, players receive both visual and auditory reinforcement to keep them motivated and engaged. If a player responds incorrectly, Camp Discovery’s unique prompting system guides the player to answer correctly. Although Camp Discovery was designed for children with autism, all children can benefit from this app. Camp Discovery can be used on tablets with iOS 6.0 or later and is compatible with iPad.
Camp Discovery provides the following benefits:
- Every learning trial begins with a preference assessment – rewards for correct responses are personalized for each player based on the results of the preference assessment. Keeping with best teaching practices, the preference assessment is administered regularly to keep the game reinforcing as each player is unique and his or her preferences will change.
- Fun mini games motivate learning – mini games serve as both a break from learning and an exciting reward for completing rounds.
- Track the child’s progress by allowing parents to monitor across games and generates graphs to show you how much your child is learning.
- Parents are in control by using multiple settings, which can be manipulated in order to personalize the player’s learning experience.
According to a recent study by researchers at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, young children with autism appear to be delayed in their ability to categorize objects and, in particular, to distinguish between living and nonliving things. The study was published in the Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one in 88 children in America is diagnosed with autism, making it more prevalent than juvenile diabetes, pediatric cancer and pediatric AIDS combined.
