Video games could teach social skills to children with autism, a study suggests.

Researchers at the University of Western Australia and the Telethons Kids Institute are working on a video game project to help children process social information.

A series of games, titled Frankie and Friends, is intended to appeal to autistic children, and help with their social development.

“We like games, we know that kids like games, so why don’t we develop something that could become an additional part of therapy”, said lead researcher, Gail Alvares.

“One of the difficulties that some children with autism may experience is paying attention to social information with people.

“They may not make eye contact with people or they might pay more attention to objects than people or faces.”

However, if you turn that attention to an educational video game, it could lead to a significant impact on an autistic child’s social interactivity,

“All three [games] target particular social skills that we think at least some kids with autism would find challenging”, said Ms Alvares.

“There are things like understanding emotions, or being able to pay attention to faces over objects, and also a skill called joint attention, which is being able to follow somebody else’s gaze”.

Around 700,000 – or just over one in 100 – people are currently diagnosed with autism in the UK.