computer based ABA

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Research-Based Computer-Assisted Therapy Now Available for Children with

Autism Spectrum Disorders

Company's First Product Increases the Availability and Affordability of

Pre-School and School-Age Autism Treatment

From a company announcement.

http://tinyurl.com/ojsqf

PRNewswire - TeachTown, a Seattle research firm, has announced the

release of their first product, TeachTown: Basics, a computer- assisted

treatment service for children with autism. With five years of research and

development, the company brings together experts from the video game

industry and autism researchers led by Whalen, PhD., BCBA.

" We have a rapidly growing school-age autism population that is

severely underserved. It's critical that these children receive ongoing

consistent treatment, " says Dr. Whalen. " TeachTown's mission is to increase

the availability and affordability of that treatment. "

" Today, thanks to organizations like Autism Speaks and Cure Autism

Now, there is greater awareness of the autism epidemic, " says CEO Sven

Liden, " and there is critical need for ongoing research, but also a current

crisis point for families who have already been diagnosed: 'How do we help

our kids now, on a massive scale?' "

TeachTown's intervention is based on the principles of applied

behavior analysis and incorporates teaching procedures from both discrete

trial and pivotal response training. " I was very impressed with the fact

that TeachTown is totally research based, " says Dr. Schreibman of the

UC San Diego Autism Research Lab, " and it is something that is adaptable and

complementary with any of the other programs that the child's likely to be

involved in: clinic-type programs, school programs, as well as in the home. "

Lawrence, a preschool special education teacher from

Washington adds, " This program does everything that I spend months teaching

my support staff to do -- scaffold learning, provide reinforcement, collect

data...and it explicitly targets skills that research indicates as areas of

deficit in our students! "

The program was developed with input from an advisory board with

expertise in applied behavior analysis, special education, developmental and

clinical psychology, and speech pathology, including Dr. Frea from

Autism Spectrum Therapies in Los Angeles, Dr. Geraldine Dawson, and Dr.

Ilene Schwartz, of the University of Washington in Seattle.

Says Tom McGurk, a Seattle parent: " We cannot stress enough what an

important tool this is. Our only wish is that this program had been

available when our son was first diagnosed! "

The curriculum teaches a broad range of skills across several domains,

including emotion identification, matching feelings to events, face

matching, following eye gaze, friendship, safety awareness, personal needs,

sequencing, phonics and early reading, vocabulary, mathematics, time, money

plus off- computer generalization activities. The subscription is designed

for children with a developmental age of 2 to 7 years. TeachTown: Basics

also includes extensive data tracking, exceeding IEP reporting requirements

in all fifty states, plus a communication interface that connects all

members of the child's team. A 30-day trial is available at

http://www.teachtown.com/.

.. . .

S.

" The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for enough good men to do

nothing. " Edmund Burke