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Mental Imagery Therapy for Autism (MITA) - an Early Intervention Computerized Language Training Program for Children With Autism

NCT07326423 · Status: ENROLLING_BY_INVITATION · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 60

Last updated 2026-01-08

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Mental Imagery Therapy for Autism (MITA) is a highly innovative adaptive language therapy application for children with autism. MITA exercises are limitless in variations, therefore avoiding routinization. Each activity is dynamic, quickly adjusting to the child's exact ability level. All activities are disguised as games that engage children. A 3-year observational clinical study of 6,454 children with ASD demonstrated that children who engaged with MITA showed 2.2-fold greater language improvement than children with similar initial evaluations (p\<0.0001). This study explores MITA intervention in a randomized controlled trial of 60 children with ASD. Two- to five-year-old ASD children will be randomly assigned to one of two groups. The MITA group will supplement their conventional language therapy with MITA exercises. The control group will receive treatment-as-usual. The hypothesis is that the MITA group will show greater improvement in developmental milestones.

Conditions

  • ASD

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Mental Imagery Therapy for Autism (MITA)

The treatment group received Prefrontal Synthesis (PFS)-training activities emphasizing mental-juxtaposition-of-objects organized into the gamified application MITA. MITA includes both verbal and nonverbal exercises aiming to develop voluntary imagination ability in general and PFS ability in particular. MITA verbal activities use higher forms of language, such as noun-adjective combinations, spatial prepositions, recursion, and syntax to train PFS: e.g., a child can be instructed to "put the large red dog behind the orange chair" or "identify the wet animal after the lion was showered by the monkey;" or "take animals home following an explanation that the lion lives above the monkey and under the cow". In every activity a child listens to a short story and then works within immersive interface to generate an answer. Correct answers are rewarded with pre-recorded encouragement.

BEHAVIORAL

General executive function

The active-control group received the same standard clinic-based early intervention but, during the tablet-computer-based therapy unit, used non-MITA applications targeting memory and executive functions (e.g., matching colors and shapes, logical sequences, same/different discrimination, sound discrimination, imitation and musicalization, early literacy and graphomotor skills, animal-sound matching, quantity-number association, comparison, counting, and introductory fractions).

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • ImagiRation, LLC

    lead INDUSTRY

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
SINGLE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
2 Years
Max Age
5 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2021-09-01
Primary Completion
2026-12-31
Completion
2026-12-31

Countries

  • Brazil

Study Locations

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Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT07326423 on ClinicalTrials.gov