Sabrina Martínez, director and psychologist at Stimulos, explains autism spectrum disorder and her center’s experiences with NeuronUP.

What is autism spectrum disorder?

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by atypical development in social interaction and communication skills with restricted early-onset activities and interests.

It currently affects four to five times more boys than girls and according to studies it is estimated to have the following prevalence:

• 1/100 (Europe, 2010),
• 1/59 (Usa, 2018).

Degrees of autism

Within the autism spectrum disorder we can distinguish 3 degrees of autism:

• Grade 1: require assistance,
• grade 2: require significant help,
• grade 3: require very significant help.

Most common characteristics of autism

Deficits in communication and social interaction:

• Difficulties in social-emotional reciprocity,
• deficits in non-verbal communicative behaviors,
• difficulties in developing and maintaining developmentally appropriate relationships.

Repetitive and restricted patterns of behavior, activities and interests.

• Stereotyped or repetitive verbal, motor or object use behaviors,
• excessive adherence to routines, ritualized verbal and nonverbal behavior patterns, or excessive resistance to change,
• restricted and obsessive interests that are abnormal in intensity or type of content,
• hyper- or hypo-sensory reactivity or unusual interest in aspects of the environment.

Autism Spectrum Disorder as told by Stimulos

Stimulos Atención Educativa s.l.

Stimulos Atención Educativa is formed by a group of professionals who are committed on a daily basis to help children and their families in their evolutionary development, detecting early different difficulties and especially helping from the prevention and minimizing as much as possible the difficulties they may present.

Stimulos began working in nursery schools to provide this attention as soon as possible. And, in a relatively short time, had to expand giving service to families also in homes and private cabinet. Currently, it has two centers and treats mainly neurodevelopmental disorders.

To support all these families we have given one of our premises in the mornings to the ANDIAT Association so that they can open an early care center and continue helping children and their families who require early care.

Stimulos professionals carry out personalized interventions based on a multidisciplinary approach for each child.

Stimulos Atención Educativa has a team formed by speech therapists, psychologists, pedagogues, occupational therapist and physiotherapist, always in continuous training.

Our experience with NeuronUP

Our team uses the NeuronUP platform to work with these children those difficulties they present both at the level of executive and cognitive functions. But above all it is very good for us to work specifically at the level of social cognition and theory of mind, since it is difficult to find programs to work in these areas.

In this way the children are more motivated and do not mind including the work in their daily life from home, because they take it more as a game than as school homework, thus enhancing the training from home and thus better results in treatment.

The case of one of our girls and NeuronUP

One of our 8 year old girls with grade 1 autism (taking into account the previous manuals: Asperger’s Syndrome) has been working with NeuronUP for almost 2 years. When she is not physically at the center, she continues training three times a week at home, reinforcing everything she is working on at the center.

In this case, the pedagogue schedules weekly games according to the results he is getting and the demands that are given from the academic environment.

In addition, as these children work very well with routines, she has already established the use of NeuronUP as part of her routine. In this way, the child can continue to improve her weak points, always under the supervision of a professional, even without having to travel, which the family also appreciates very much.

In our day to day we always have to try to motivate our children in the sessions because progress depends on it and with NeuronUP we have managed to find a very positive complement to work to achieve our goals.

In addition, they are launching new games on the platform, so you can always access new alternatives to work different areas.