Managing emotions in autistic children through serious game with tangible interfaces

The autism spectrum is identified by presenting a set of symptoms that appear in early childhood with a particular impact on communication and language, social interaction and repetitive behaviors. These symptoms accompany them throughout their lives, compromising and limiting their daily functioning. In recent years researchers from different areas of science and technology have been interested in serving people with special needs. This paper presents the development of a serious game as support in the management of emotions in children with autism. It is proposed to integrate tangible user interfaces which interact with a gamified application, through an RFID communication board. The serious game proposal was evaluated by experts in special education and through a case study of a child. Favorable results were obtained in both evaluations.