Digital Intervention Training for Intraverbal Behavior in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Intraverbal deficits represent a core characteristic of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder(ASD), significantly impairing their social communication abilities. Traditional face-to-face interventions are often constrained by limited accessibility and insufficient generalization of skills, while current digital approaches rarely focus specifically on intraverbal behavior. This study aimed to develop a gamified digital intervention grounded in the "Conversation Train" framework and to conduct a systematic evaluation of its effectiveness. A total of 40 children with ASD, aged 5 to 10 years, were randomly assigned to either an experimental group or a control group. The experimental group received standard training supplemented with 30 sessions of gamified digital intervention(15 minutes per day, five days per week), whereas the control group received standard training only. Outcome assessments included standardized instruments—the Autism Treatment Evaluation Checklist(ATEC) and the Communication Behavior Checklist (CB)—as well as a researcher-developed intraverbal behavior scenario test comprising two subtests: dialogue selection and real-time dialogue performance. No significant differences were observed between groups in baseline demographic or clinical characteristics (all p>0.05). Following the intervention, the experimental group showed significantly lower ATEC scores (Z=-3.551,p<0.001), higher CB scores (Z=-2.943,p=0.003), and improved performance on both subtests of the scenario test (dialogue selection: Z=-4.097, p<0.001; real-time dialogue: Z=-3.758,p<0.001), with moderate to large effect sizes (r = 0.49–0.97) across all measures. In contrast, the control group exhibited no significant changes. These findings indicate that the proposed gamified digital intervention effectively enhances intraverbal behavior and reduces core symptoms of ASD in children, offering a feasible, accessible, and scalable alternative to conventional face-to-face interventions.