The Use of Serious Games for Developing Social and Communication Skills in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders—Review

The rate of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) diagnoses has peaked in recent years—2000 study found ASD birth-year prevalence of one in 150 eight-year-olds, or 0.67%—which at the time was considerably higher than previous findings. In 2021, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control issued alarming new data indicating that the rate of autism among American eight-year-old children had risen again, this time to 1 in 44, or about 2.3% (American Psychiatric Association in Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. Arlington [1]). Many studies prove the effectiveness and positive impact of using smart telephones, mobile apps, and computer games to practice skills as therapy for children with ASD (Meghan et al. in Pediatrics 141:335–345 [2]). This review summarizes some of the most interesting and accessible serious games described in the scientific literature and designed to improve the social and communication skills of infants and toddlers with ASD. Learning and playing games are fundamental to the development of children's social skills allowing them to form independent relationships with peers (Simonoff et al. in J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 47(8):921–929 [3]). As autistic children often have difficulty with peer relationships (Gordon-Lipkin et al. in Pediatrics 141(4) [4]), developing game-based skills through computer-assisted solutions could be an essential tool for autistic children to improve their social performance. The results were identified through extensive literature search conducted in the Central and Eastern European Online Library (CEEOL), EBSCO: Academic Search Complete, EBSCO: eBook Academic Collection and ScienceDirect, Academic Search Complete, Health Source: Consumer Edition, ScienceDirect, Scopus, Web of Science and Wiley Online Library for a time period between 2006 and 2021 by using a combination of the following free-text terms: autism, ASD, social skills, serious games, computer games, education, communication, software, portable, computer-based. The search was limited to papers published in the English language. We finally highlight current common limitations and address new challenging research directions.