Evaluation of the Acquisition of Social Skills in ASD Students Under an Embedded Gamification Mode

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

Congratulations for the the research. It is highly enlightening and useful.

I will present the pros and cons of the paper, but the cons are also presented by you, so it is more of a practical approach to the requirements of the journal.

Here we go:

PROS

The gamification methods presents a challenging, yet practical adaptation of educational contents to various contexts, this being one where it shows its applicability and use.

The teaching materials and methods reveal their usefulness with regards to the development of social skills over time.

Individualized learning presents the possibility of continuous monitoring and it can be tailored to the specific needs of each student.

The longitudinal data collection allows to discern patterns and trends in social skills acquisition. Smaller-scale programs seem to benefit from this, since consistent individual progress over time is an important metric.

The challenge would be to replicate the gamification method to a broader context, and perhaps a collaboration in the future with other experts in this field would be a huge step forward, but the research proved that it works.

CONS

I would suggest breaking the Introduction into at least two parts, since it is too long.

In the end, I would also write separate Limitations and Future research sections.

Due to the situation of the students, obtaining a large sample is, by definition, difficult. It would most likely take more time and significant effort to collaborate on a large sample.

However, the small sample size does present challenges for the research, but you did mention this aspect. Again, the challenge would be to implement the method on a large sample, but that requires collaborations between institutions.

There is also a limited intervention time, which means a reduced opportunity to capture long term effects.

The single center data collection is also a challenge for the research, because, as you mentioned, it narrows context considerably.

The gamification method, adapted to the specific context of the research, would require further specialized training and resources, which, if available, would be a huge step in the right direction, but if lacking, the students would be the ones with the greatest loss.

Overall, great work!

Author Response

See the attached file

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Very detailed in methods and would easily be able to be replicated. While I realize the demographics of the school are what they are, male to female proportions are quite skewed and you may want to address this as a limitation in the article.  Adding graphics for Evaluation stage may help the reader better understand the differences among each stage.

< !--a=1-->< !--a=1-->< !--a=1-->

Author Response

See the attached file

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf