Testing Social Sprouts in the ConecTEA

Social Sprouts is an open-source, multi-platform serious game (https://github.com/DavidChGA/social-sprouts) designed to enhance the social skills of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The application was developed as part of the Final Degree Project (TFG) by students Paula Oramas, David Chaparro, and Johan Cruz, under the supervision of two of our faculty members: Manuel Freire and Javier Bravo. The game aims to improve the socio-communicative performance of these children. To this end, it seeks to strengthen verbal expression, emotional recognition, and adaptation to new environments. One of its objectives is to enable the child to learn while being engaged, with the goal of integrating the game into their daily routine.

The ConecTEA Foundation (https://www.fundacionconectea.org/) has as its primary objective the improvement of the lives of children affected by ASD, as well as engaging in and promoting initiatives for social inclusion and normalization. This foundation closely collaborated on the Final Degree Project by conducting a trial with real children. For this reason, Manuel and Javier visited ConecTEA on April 5 to initiate the experiment, which involved 20 children with varying degrees of ASD over several weeks. For the experiment, two Samsung S9 tablets were used, on which the Social Sprouts game was installed, and its functionality was explained to ConecTEA. Manuel and Javier returned to ConecTEA to conclude the experiment and gather feedback from the foundation’s counselors. Through this blog, we wish to express our gratitude for the warm reception provided by ConecTEA and their valuable collaboration. The results obtained from the analysis of the experiment were highly useful in improving the Social Sprouts game and understanding its practical utility.