ReviewAutism : the international journal of research and practice2025
Is there evidence that playing games promotes social skills training for autistic children and youth?
Review in Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- A Study on the Intervention Effect of the Creative Problem Solving (CPS) Model in Serious Games for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Gaming in the intervention and support process: A realist evaluation of a gaming-based programme.Autism : the international journal of research and practice · 2025Article
- Virtual environments as a novel and promising approach in (neuro)diagnosis and (neuro)therapy: a perspective on the example of autism spectrum disorder.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
lay abstractThere is growing interest in using games to help autistic children and youth learn social skills. However, there is no clear agreement on the best way to design these games to ensure they are most effective. In our research, we reviewed studies that used games to teach social skills to autistic children and youth. We aimed to describe the different types of games, identify which ones were most successful and understand the psychological methods used. We searched five databases and found 3070 studies, which we narrowed down to 17 that met our criteria. Each of these 17 studies reported that their game helped improve social skills in autistic children. Interestingly, all these studies used some form of technology, even though this was not a requirement. However, we noticed that many studies were not clear on what specific social skills they were targeting or how they defined 'social skills'. For future work, we suggest that game-based interventions should be more clearly based on established theories. In addition, it is important to involve autistic people in the design of these games to ensure they meet their needs effectively.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.