Technological Intervention Combined with Meta cognitive Guidance for Promoting Eye Contact among Children with HFASD

The current study explored the effect of metacognitive guidance, combined with an innovative technological intervention program, for promoting eye contact among children with high functioning autism spectrum disorder (HFASD). In this study 18 boys (M = 91.67, SD = 14.26 age in month) participated, and were divided randomly into two equal intervention groups (with vs. without metacognitive guidance). The intervention was based on a computer game (C-Me), that contains four cartoon characters. Each character has three problems to solve with the help of the child, who was requested to make an eye contact with the character in order to proceed in the game. C-Me monitored the participants' eyes and head movements while playing,using a laptop built-in camera. The participants played with C-Me for six 30-minute sessions, and their ability to make eye contact was measured pre- and postintervention. The results indicate a significant improvement in eye contact in favor of the metacognitive intervention group, as compared to the non-metacognitive intervention group. The results will be discussed during the conference.