Nationwide Creative Play Study

This research is for my master's thesis in developmental psychology and addresses a prevailing issue with "educational" mobile apps. There are over 455,000 apps on various app stores marketed as "educational", but hardly any of them are vetted for promoting any sort of educational benefits (particularly for autistic children). However, there are a select few which have been tested with typically developing children and have proven to be more apt than others in select processes. One such app is Toca Boca World, which is not only shown to benefit creative play skills (and more broadly social skill development) but is also immensely popular (over 100,000,000 downloads). This app has not yet been tested for autistic children, and I thought it would be pertinent to do so. Children are increasingly spending more time on devices, and having an app which is both entertaining and promotes social skill development could serve casual benefits for autistic children (might as well spend that time on something that is helpful and educational).

ASD diagnosis and between the ages of 4-13.

Not having an ASD diagnosis and not being between the ages of 4-13.