It is crucial for families and professionals to promote basic instrumental skills in children with autism, as these skills can help with comprehensive growth and development, and are a starting point in acquiring the essential tools needed for one to live an independent and successful life, These skills include oral language, reading, writing, and mathematics. Therefore, given that ICT and mobile applications (apps) are effective tools that offer suitable content, and are designed exclusively for people with this disorder, working on these skills with apps is an interesting option that is worthy of our attention. We analyzed 88 apps that focused on these skills, through a duly validated system of indicators, calculating frequencies, percentages, measures of central tendency and dispersion, and non-parametric contrast statistics. The app search was carried out in the Google Play Store, with the keyword “autism”, in English and in Spanish. Most of the apps focused on aspects linked to oral language and reading, but few were aimed at reading and mathematics. In addition to the apps’ lack of specialization in the last two skills, the vast majority did not specify the age group for which their content was intended.
The active participation of teachers in the process of diagnosis and intervention of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is relevant to helping mitigate future problems in children with ADHD. In training programmes, teachers usually implement strategies to improve the child’s functioning after participating in an ADHD management-training programme. However, they receive little psycho-educational training and coaching and have low-to-moderate levels of knowledge of the disorder, mostly in terms of training in classroom management strategies. This study analyses the effectiveness of training in increasing knowledge and perceived self-efficacy with regard to ADHD in 40 primary school teachers. Twenty of these teachers participated in a long-term psycho-educational training programme on the management of ADHD (intervention multimodal group), while the other 20 did not (control group). The results of the post-treatment phase revealed statistically significant differences between the two groups of teachers with regard to their knowledge (Z = −5.427; p = 0.000; d = 0.89) and perceived self-efficacy (Z = −5.150; p = 0.000; d = 0.79), in favour of the participants who had received training. Our findings have important implications for the design of training programmes for teachers in the management of ADHD in the classroom.
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