Informing the Design of Attention Assessment System for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Thematic Analysis Approach

Attention deficits are highly prevalent in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and these deficits affect their academic achievement. Teachers use subjective attention assessment as a metric to provide required learning support. The subjective approach requires long year of experience, and it is timing consuming as compared with objective assessment. Utilizing the advantage of existing technologies for objective assessment in children with ASD can speed up the time for attention assessment and support stakeholders who have less experience with attention assessment. The goal of this study is to explore attention assessment parameters that are commonly used by experts with children with ASD. A semi-structured interview was conducted with 17 experts from six different ASD related disciplines. Thematic analysis was applied to identity the main factors informing the design of attention evaluation tool. Five main themes emerged as critical parameters for objective attention assessment in children with ASD which are nature of attention, strategies of gaining attention, attentional behaviors, and quantifying attention level. The findings reveal that parallel consideration of attentional behaviors provides an enhanced paradigm for designing an attention assessment system for children with ASD.