A Study On Inquiry-Based Cognitive Training For Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

The main purpose of this study is to explore the effect of inquiry-based cognitive training on cognitive ability of children with autism spectrum disorder.20 children with autism were selected in a special education school in Shandong, and divided into 2 groups,10 in the experimental group and 10 in the control group, both two groups continue their routine training, children in the experimental group also accept inquiry-based cognitive training everyday. Inquiry based cognitive training contains 3 parts, basic cognitive training, social cognitive training and executive function and attention training. In the basic cognitive training, human-computer interaction of inquiry teaching game is used to teach children, social cognitive training uses emotional recognition system, executive function and attention training use tablet games. The training is carried out for 30 minutes a day,5 times a week, for 12 weeks. Before and after the training, both two groups complete a comprehensive evaluation, including the executive function and attention, social cognition ability, based cognition ability, and two other evaluations. Parents are asked to completed the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function and Social Responsiveness Scale. The results for two evaluations are compared. In addition, parents are also asked to complete parents' review, we can understand the changes in the daily life of children before and after intervention.The comparison between pre-assessment and post-assessment shows that children in the experimental group improve their based cognitive ability. These results were analyzed by Paired-Samples T Test and we find that children in the experimental group significantly improve their ability of attention, short-term memory, facial expression recognition and executive function scores. Interviews with parents also show that children in the experimental group improve their daily behavior.The conclusion is that inquiry-based cognitive training used in this research is an effective method to improve the autistic children's attention and executive function, basic cognitive ability and social cognitive ability for children with autism spectrum disorder.