Evaluation of the effectiveness of a serious game titled "Kookism" on the receptive lexicon in 4-9-year-old autistic children.
A 20-minute serious game layered onto ABA gives a quick but short-lived jump in receptive vocabulary for young kids with autism.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team added a 20-minute computer game called Kookism to regular ABA sessions. Kids aged 4-9 with autism played the game every other day while still getting their usual therapy.
Researchers then tested whether the game group learned more new words than kids who only had ABA.
What they found
Right after treatment ended, the game group understood more words than the ABA-only group. The boost was clear but not huge.
Two months later the extra gain had faded. Both groups knew about the same number of words again.
How this fits with other research
Novack et al. (2019) saw a different story. Their Camp Discovery app also taught receptive language, but the gains stayed strong after the iPad was taken away. The apps look alike, yet one kept working and one did not.
Han et al. (2025) pooled 25 ABA studies and found high-intensity programs give medium language gains. Kookism shows a short extra bump on top of normal ABA, but the meta-analysis reminds us that more hours still matter most.
Linstead et al. (2017) backs this up: more weekly hours and longer months of ABA predict the biggest language leaps. A quick game can help, yet it does not replace time in the chair.
Why it matters
You can use Kookism or a similar app when you need a fast vocabulary boost before a school transition or assessment. Keep the game short, fun, and tied to the words you already target in table work. Just remember to keep total ABA hours high and plan refreshers so the new words stick past the first month.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Autistic children often face difficulties with semantic skills such as receptive lexicon. Games based on behavioral principles have been emphasized for treating autistic children. Serious Games are a new and effective way to alleviate deficits in autistic children. The present study aimed to design and investigate the efficiency of a Serious Game titled “Kookism” on the receptive lexicon of autistic children. The empirical study with a pretest-posttest design, and a two-months follow-up, involved 30 children (aged 4–9) at Birjand and Zahedan, Iran. The participants were selected by convenience sampling and randomly divided into experimental and control groups (each 15 participants). The control group received the Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), while the experimental group received a treatment consisting of the ABA plus the “Kookism” game. The 20-min sessions were held every other day for two months. Data were collected using MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. After confirming the essential assumptions for the covariance analysis, ANCOVA was used to analyze the data. The findings showed a significant difference between the experimental and control groups in the increase in the participants’ receptive lexicon after eliminating the effects of the covariate (p < 0.05). Two months later, there was no statistically significant difference. (P = 0.144, F = 0.077, p > 0.05). The findings of this study indicate that Serious Games significantly improved the receptive lexicon of autistic children. This result remained for up to two months.
Heliyon, 2024 · doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e41036