TOBY (Therapy Outcomes By You)

Description:

The TOBY Autism Therapy is an early-intervention iPad app for young children with autism disorder. It includes a combination of 330 in-app as well as real-world tasks that coordinate with each other. Some pre-requisite tasks are to be completed by your child on their first go, based off the results of which, the app suggests a choice of tasks drawn from a curriculum tree. The app adapts to your child's unique learning and developmental needs as they progress through the tasks by setting goals and adjusting difficulty levels. TOBY's in-built reward system allows your child to collect tokens as they complete tasks and spend these on fun activities as well as 3 levels of prompts to encourage your child to be an independent learner. There are 52 skills to be learnt across 4 learning areas: social skills, language, sensory and imitation. You and your child are empowered to create a personalized learning plan of activities each day as it suits your lifestyle and routines with automated learning reports to keep track of progress. 

Service URL:

http://tobyplaypad.com/

Agency Responsible:

Curtin University, Deakin University, autismWest.

Mobile Platform:

Apple.

Details

Format:

Other. iPad App

Intervention Type:

Educational (primarily educational material or psychoeducation).

Course Structure:

No Set Course.

Course Length:

Other. TOBY offers around 330 activities. However, as there is no set structure, the activities and tasks you and your child take part in is up to yourselves. The recommended play time with TOBY is 20 minutes plus a similar amount of time off the iPad taking part in TOBY-directed real-world tasks.

Support Option:

Automated only. Auto-generated reports to track progress and determine amount of external support required. A help guide developed by therapists with experience in working with children on the autism spectrum is also available. The help-guide convers a broad range of topics from optimizing the home environment for conducive learning to task-specific instructions and troubleshooting information.

Target Audience

Primary Category:

Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Target Audience:

Child. Early childhood (2 - 4 years old)

Language:

English.

Access

Mobile platforms:

Apple:

https://itunes.apple.com/app/toby-playpad/id532454929

Fee:

Fee-based. $25.99 on the apple app store

Access:

Closed: Fee required.

Contact Details:

toby@autismwest.org.au

Research evidence

Research Trials:

2

Research RCTs:

1

Outcome Summary:

To-date, the potential effectiveness of the TOBY Autism Therapy has been tested in a two trials.

 

A small-scale pilot trial tested the app on 33 children aged 16 and below over a period of 4 to 6 weeks. Among these participants, those with a rate of correct responses greater than or equal to 80% and those with fewer than 100 Complete Learn Units (CLUs) were excluded from the sample. Learning outcomes were reported for the 11 remaining partcipants. They experienced an average of 6.18 CLUs/min at an average level of 61.5% correct answers and completed on average 48.62% of the ipad curriculum and 17.3% of the NET curriculum. This may be because the NET curriculum requires 28.24 CLUs to complete 1% of the curriculum. Both slow and fast learners were catered-to by the program. As there was no control group for comparison and no pre- and post- measures, this study does not contribute to the evidence-base for the effectiveness of this program. However, it provides preliminary evidence that this format of program delivery may be useful in delivering effective early intervention for autism.

 

The second trial was a larger scale trial involving 80 children (16 female) who were randomized to either a control group receiving treatment as usual (TAU) versus an intervention group who received the TOBY app along with TAU for a duration of 6 months. Participants were followed up at 3 and 6 months. Results showed that there were no differences between the groups for the primary outcome, measured via the Autism Treatment Evaluation Checklist, at either follow-up. However, the intervention group showed significant improvements at the 6-month follow up in terms of secondary outcomes (Fine Motor and Visual Reception subscales of the Mullen Scale of Early Learning; the Total Words Understood Scale of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Index).

 

Overall, these trials provide preliminary support for the TOBY app as a treatment or complementary resource for children with autism spectrum disorder. Further evidence is required from future studies.

Recommended rating, reviewer 1:

Recommended rating, reviewer 2:

Read more about Beacon's Smiley Rating System.

Research paper citations

Moore, D. W., Venkatesh, S., Anderson, A., Greenhill, S., Phung, D., Duong, T.,  Whitehouse, A. J. (2015). TOBY play-pad application to teach children with ASD - A pilot trial. Dev Neurorehabil, 18(4), 213-217. doi: 10.3109/17518423.2013.784817

Whitehouse, A. J. O., Granich, J., Alvares, G., Busacca, M., Cooper, M. N., Dass, A., Anderson, A. (2017). A randomised controlled trial of an iPad-based application to complement early behavioural intervention in Autism Spectrum Disorder. J Child Psychol Psychiatry, 58(9), 1042-1052. doi: 10.1111/jcpp.12752