Remote Sensory-Cognitive Assessment in Children with Autism: Evaluating Feasibility and Performance Outcomes

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Developmental Psychology
• Clinical Psychology

Background:

• Remote assessment in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) faces challenges like engagement and data quality.
• Digital tools offer potential solutions for accessible sensory-cognitive evaluations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the feasibility of multi-session, remotely administered digital sensory-cognitive assessments in children with ASD.
• To quantify task engagement and data integrity during remote assessments.

Main Methods:

• 121 children with ASD (aged 8-16) completed a three-session remote assessment battery.
• Assessments targeted emotion discrimination, visual/cognitive processing, and auditory processing.
• Feasibility was measured using a data-quality coding system and engagement observations.

Main Results:

• An average of 85% of participants yielded usable data across 11 behavioral tasks.
• Data exclusions were broadly distributed, with no single task showing excessive failure rates.
• Performance data for included participants were within expected ranges.

Conclusions:

• Remote, multi-session digital sensory-cognitive assessment is feasible for children with ASD.
• These findings support the scalability of digital assessments for studying perceptual and cognitive variability in ASD.
• This work provides a foundation for larger-scale research in autism.