The use of serious games to develop social skills in children with Autism: A Literature Review
Description
This literature review explores the role of serious games in improving the social and emotional intelligence of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The research included 38 studies examining the effectiveness of these games in enhancing skills such as social interaction, understanding social rules, cooperation, effective communication, expression, and management of emotions by offering interactive learning experiences. Serious games are an innovative, promising educational tool that can improve the overall well-being of individuals with autism. However, choosing the right game depends on many factors that require proper assessment of the children's individual characteristics, good knowledge of the game and take under consideration all of the available material and technical resources.
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2. Methodology The methodology of this research followed the structure of a systematic literature review, gathering and analyzing data from reliable sources in order to clarify the effectiveness of serious games as a tool for supporting children with autism. A systematic search was conducted in scientific databases such as Google Scholar, PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and IEEE Xploreusing the following keywords, “seriousgames”, “autism”, “social-emotional intelligence”, “specia leducation”, “gamification”, “ASD interventions”. The criteria for inclusion were the language in which the articles were written, the time span of their publication, their focus on a specific population group with an exclusive diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, and the use of serious games. In this way, articles written in English and/or Greek over the last fifteen years (2010-2025) were accepted, focus on children with ASD, and evaluate the effect of serious games exclusively on social and emotional intelligence. The exclusion criteria apply to articles that were not directly related to the topic and concern, for example, cognitive or motor skills, articles focusing on other population groups, and articles of non-scientific origin, such as personal opinions, unevaluated articles, or texts not published in reputable academic journals. The review highlighted several studies that support the effectiveness of serious games in developing social and emotional skills in children with autism. More specifically, the study selection process began with the identification of 500 records from the following databases, Google Scholar, PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and IEEE Xplore using the keywords. In addition, 22 entries were identified through manual searches and reference lists, bringing the total number of entries initially identified to 522. Applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 480 records remained, of which 30 were duplicates and were removed. Proceeding to the evaluation of the suitability of the findings, it appeared that several of them were not entirely relevant to the topic, either in terms of the type of disability under study, the type of games used for intervention, or the skills targeted.Thus, of the 100 full-text articles that remained, 62 were removed because they did not meet methodological requirements, presenting incomplete research design and insufficient data regarding the intervention applied and the theoretical basis followed. A total of 38 studies were included after a systematic review of the maximum suitability for the research topic.
Institutions
- University of Macedonia