RehabiliTEA: Gamification-based platform for assessing reactivity and connectivity in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

The growing prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in recent years has highlighted the need for effective interventions in the cognitive domain to enable children with ASD to achieve success in their daily activities. In response to this need, we have developed RehabiliTEA, a platform for cognitive training in children with neurodevelopmental disorders. Our platform incorporates a Brain-Computer Interface module that allows for the collection of brain signals associated with neural activity. In addition, RehabiliTEA employs gamification techniques, including minimalist visual design tailored to sensory sensitivities, immediate multimodal feedback, and progressive challenge structures, to engage users and to provide therapists with quantitative performance and EEG-based indicators, and to dynamically adjust game difficulty and task demands according to each child’s progress. Our platform has been evaluated by 38 therapists using the System Usability Scale, with results indicating its potential for clinical use. • In recent years, there has been increasing interest in the clinical application of new technologies to address different variables, one of them being the cognitive training of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), a pathology whose prevalence is expected to continue to increase in the coming years. • We propose RehabiliTEA, a rehabilitation platform that utilizes gamification techniques and brain-computer interfaces to train the cognitive skills of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). • The design of the RehabiliTEA platform is scalable and facilitates the incorporation of new types of games and cognitive skills, as well as new metrics and devices that allow collecting more data on their status and intervention to follow. • The prototype of RehabiliTEA has been evaluated using the System Usability Scale (SUS), with 38 early care and functional habilitation therapists participating in the evaluation. • The evaluation of RehabiliTEA showed that therapists are interested in the use and application of technology in regular cognitive therapy and see it as a valuable complement to their existing approaches.