Melbourne, Victoria – Australian tech company TALi Health recently launched its innovative test for assessing attention vulnerabilities in early childhood, which is being rolled out via an early release program to schools nationwide in Term 4.
The program, TALi DETECT, is delivered via tablet device and enables early childhood attention skills to be measured in the one 20-minute session. DETECT consists of seven engaging, digital games that assess a child’s ability to selectively attend to important information, understand different perspectives and employ self-control to resist distractions.
Glenn Smith, CEO of TALi Health, says the company’s aim is “to deliver products that can be accessible to children, parents, teachers and healthcare professionals, that aren’t invasive and that complement other interventions – such as pharmaceuticals or other types of clinical intervention – that can be used in or out of a clinic, and most importantly at school or at home as well.”
“With TALi DETECT, we’re taking the first step in identifying vulnerabilities,” Glenn continues. “And then, with our already released TALi TRAIN program, offering a non-drug intervention delivered through a game-based program that actually trains the brain.”
Designed in collaboration with game developers and experts in cognitive science at Monash University, TALi DETECT was supported by an Australian Government Cooperative Research Centre project grant.
Azadeh Feizpour, Data Scientist at TALi Health, says, “Through a large-scale clinical trial, more than 300 children from Australian schools – neurotypical children aged between three to seven – were recruited and tested on TALi DETECT to assess its efficacy in detecting differences in attention skills.”
“Your neuroplasticity, or how pliable your brain is, is very significant between the ages of three and eight years,” she adds. “So it allows any type of intervention at this age to potentially change the neural pathways.”
The second app in the TALi journey, TALi TRAIN, is a five-week intensive program that strengthens children’s three core attention skills – Selective Attention, Sustained Attention and Executive Attention. TALi TRAIN has already been validated by numerous randomised controlled clinical trials as an early intervention program to help improve attention in both typically developing children and children with attention disorders.
“TALi DETECT is still in its beta phase, with the validity of the app currently being tested,” concludes Azadeh Feizpour. “This trial will provide information on whether TALi DETECT can accurately assess attention skills in childhood. A summary of this clinical trial will be available in early 2020.”
