Home Automation and Applied Behavior Analysis: Mand’s Development in the Natural Environment

This work, based on a careful examination of the scientific-technological literature concerning the use of technology on the autistic clinical population, highlights the need to implement new and flexible tools that can support clinicians in a therapeutic intervention based on applied behavioral analysis to individuals with autism. Home automation constitutes fertile ground for the development of tools that can catalyze the generalization of the results envisaged by the objectives of the behavioral intervention plan. The technology is precise, constant, and not affected by stress and emotional overload. By interacting in a technically correct way, the boundaries of the therapeutic setting widen and the autistic person is constantly in a context built for his needs. The purpose of our article is, therefore, to describe an intervention procedure based on the applied analysis of behavior suitable to be subsequently made concrete, through a process of IT-technological transposition, in a home device that the autistic subject can use on a daily basis. Among the most important difficulties for people on the autism spectrum is the ability to make requests using appropriate language. For this reason, it appeared to be of scientific significance to describe a procedure that has the following objectives: stimulate the ability to ask through a verbal request; stimulate verbal language through the refinement of verbal production.