ABA at Home - Autism Language Therapy for Kids

This app teaches children of all ages on the Autism spectrum or with learning delays (or even typically developing children) to identify over 1800 everyday images and words using exciting animations to reward the child's progress. All the parent has to do is take a minute to select the categories (e.g. Actions, Food, Animals, Colors, Counting, Alphabet, etc Emotions etc.) and then select the settings e.g. how often you want the child to be rewarded with the animations or have the labels displayed beneath each image. You can switch off the rewards if you want to reward the child with tangible rewards such as a special toy or hugs, tickles or social praise. Then you simply give the app to your child to play with. Your child may need a little encouragement at first but will soon have lots of fun with it while acquiring valuable language skills. The whole app was designed to be easy to use for the parent and child.

The app includes:
1) A Matching Section is the first step in teaching a child to identify images. You have the option of a basic level (identical matching) e.g. matching CAR to an identical CAR image or switching at any stage to the more advanced level where a child would have to e.g. match a YELLOW BOWL with WHITE BOWL. Some parents try to begin with Receptive Language (explained below) before doing the Matching phase. Doing matching first will make the next step a lot easier.

2) The Receptive Language step comes next. This simply means the child is taught to understand the meaning of vocalized words using images. The app uses the ABA DTT (Discrete Trial Training) principles to encourage the child to progress through the different images and labels. First, the child has just one choice to make - to identify a single image by touching the image, then two and so on until s/he masters the image by getting it correct as many times as you have selected e.g. 6,7 or 8 times etc. depending on his/her ability . The app then automatically moves on to the next image. You can decide the frequency of the rewards. The app is set at 1 i.e. the child is rewarded after every correct selection (or trial) but you can set this to a higher number. The prompts and labels can be switched on or off.

3) A Phonics section that easily moves through the sounds of the alphabet at the touch of the screen. This will help with the next stage.

4) The Reading section is NOT ordinary sight reading (where a child is taught to recognize and say words without knowing the meaning of them). In this app the child is taught to associate words with the images he has learned in the previous sections so s/he understands their meaning.

When you exit the app the settings and progress of the child is saved for the next session.