Autistic kids can benefit from video games

Autism experts in the US have turned to the Xbox Kinect to not only treat children with the neurological disorder, but detect signs of it in undiagnosed individuals.

The Steuart W. Weller Ashburn Elementary School in Virginia is one of the institutes pioneering the Kinect therapy.

“The positive high-fives, the cheering for each other, that was something that wasn’t seen as often, and it became a regular thing,” said Anne-Marie Skeen, a specialist teacher at the Virginia school, of kids playing the motion-based games.

One of the effects of autism is that it impacts on a person’s ability to communicate and interact with others.

“Communicating with each other, giving each other directions, giving compliments… I can teach social skills and communication with board games and with other games but the students are so much more motivated to take part in games like this, and with games like the Kinect we get a lot more out of them,” said Lynn Keenan, a teacher and trainer at the school who has been working with Kinect for two years.

“It’s much easier to build the skills when they are motivated to learn. We’ve found some pretty impressive results,” said Keenan.

Kinect is also being used to detect signs of autism by researchers at University of Minnesota, as it allows them to easily identify hyperactivity – a sign of autism.

Andy Shih, of Autism Speaks, said the Kinect therapy had shown “encouraging results”, but his organisation was not completely convinced.

“It’s very difficult for any one product to be the miracle cure, the magic bullet that will meet all the needs of all individuals… We advocate for more research and more data. Right now the information is very preliminary,” he said.