BATON ROUGE - A research team at LSU is helping preschool-age children on the autism spectrum get a jumpstart on life by making changes to the Mission: Play app.
LSU Assistant Professor Nick Fears and the Human Development and Daily Life Lab in the School of Kinesiology are adapting the app to meet the needs of autistic children and their families as they learn motor skills like jumping, kicking, throwing, and catching.
The Mission: Play app, created by Amanda Staiano, an associate professor of Pediatric Obesity and Health Behavior at Pennington Biomedical Research Center, and Kip Webster from the University of Tennessee, partnered with Fears to adapt this app for autistic children.
"Our goal long-term is that they'll be able to live the lives that they want to live, access the participation and activities they want to do, and live independently and as fully engaged lives as they dream of," Fears said.
It is not a replacement for professional therapy. A local parent taking part in the research says the app is a free, convenient supplement to therapy that she can use anywhere, anytime, and at the right time for her 5-year-old son Elijah.
"There's always therapy that you need, and there's always extra therapy that can be really, really helpful to you. Accessing that: wait list, finding the time to take off work to take your children, all of that kind of thing can be really challenging. So having that accessibility through an app -- you get to choose when you do it," Renee Underwood said.
Fears said community input will help to shape how the space-themed app is adapted, and feedback from those who previewed the app has been overwhelmingly positive. Autistic adults expressed excitement about using the app to support autistic children. Many commented on how helpful it would have been for them as children. Parents who previewed the app also responded positively to its flexibility. They appreciated being able to choose the timing that works best for their family and the clear, step-by-step instructions and videos that support them in working with their children at home.
The LSU team will wrap up community interviews this summer and begin testing the adapted app this fall. They've also received new funding from the U.S. Department of Defense to conduct a clinical trial and evaluate the app's impact.