Making Eye Contact
While students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are thought to be visual learners, they nevertheless, or perhaps because of their heightened visual processing abilities, find establishing and maintaining appropriate eye contact or eye gaze with communication partners extremely difficult. Anecdotal evidence suggests that people with ASD may find eye contact difficult when engaging with a communication partner as processing speech and facial expression at the same time results in sensory overload. Therefore it should not be assumed that because a person with ASD is not looking they are not attending to and processing what is being said.TED'S ICE CREAM ADVENTURE
This game teaches the child that they have to look at someone to communicate, and that if someone is looking at them, they should respond correctly by looking back.
The game does not eye contact by insisting 'look at me' but makes it a gradual process. The large eyed Teddy bear characters are super cute and non confrontational. The game reinforces the following keywords that parents and teachers can generalize into real world situations; look, looking, eyes.
Bob and Friends
This game helps teach autistic children when it is appropriate to make eye contact. Many children with autism like the predictability of mechanical objects particlarly trains. The narrative follows Bob the work train and his friend Nick who are carting rocks to port station. The characters need to look at each others eyes to communicate and to find out where to dump the rocks.
The game reinforces the following keywords that can be used as a tool by parents and teachers for encouraging positive behaviours in real life situations; 'looking' and 'look'.
