Project Description
Challenge
Social skills significantly impair children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), which can often lead to additional problems concerning health, education, and addictions. However, there is limited research on the efficacy of social skills interventions for children affected by FASD.
To address this knowledge gap, researchers will investigate if gaming could be a viable intervention with adolescents with FASD, in both the improvement of social skills as well as improvements in motivation and engagement.
Project Summary
Researchers created two gaming studies, one virtual environment (VE) game and one tabletop role-playing game (RPG). Both VEs and RPGs can allow participants to interact with complex settings, encouraging participant interaction, and delivering immediate feedback. Both provided opportunities for repeated practice and exposure to scenarios with real-life applicability presented and facilitated in a safe and controllable manner. RPGs played face-to-face with peers can provide opportunities to practice skills and take social risks. In VE games, stressors such as fear of rejection lessen.
Result
For this project, researchers recruited two groups of twenty adolescents with FASD for both games, which have a “Mission-Impossible” theme. Both games were played with five adolescents and one facilitator and designed to target the same areas of neuropsychological, social skills, and executive function deficits. Outcomes were measured to examine potential neuropsychological and social skills improvements through questionnaires and gameplay. Ultimately, this research provided vital information on how aspects of social skills and executive functioning improved in FASD during the adolescent period.
Team
Investigators
Jacqueline Pei, University of Alberta
Amy Salmon, University of British Columbia
Dr. Patricia Boechler, University of Alberta
Rianne Spaans, University of Alberta
