Transcriber: Anaelle Fécil Reviewer: Mirjana Čutura
As you look at these pictures, what do you see?
Kids smiling, laughing, having fun.
Now think back to your own happiest childhood memories.
Hanging out with friends at school or in your local neighbourhood,
sleepovers,
birthday parties,
camps,
sporting trips.
The kids you shared these experiences with may still be amongst your closest friends.
Now, imagine a childhood that looks strikingly different.
A childhood where you're on the sidelines of games,
and when you ask other kids if you can join in, they say, 'No.'
A childhood where you detonate social landmines
by accidentally saying and doing things that upset and offend others.
Recently, I was working with a kid
who told me that I'd better hurry up and get married and have kids
because otherwise, my eggs would dry up,
I'd only get older, fatter, and wrinklier,
and no one would want to marry me.
I wasn't offended.
He was just looking out for me.
(Laughter)
He didn't mean to upset me with what he said.
And even if he did recognise that what he'd said offended me,
he wouldn't have known how to repair the situation.
Social blunders like this
are part of the daily lives of one in 68 children worldwide.
These are children who are on the autism spectrum.
For the past 15 years,
my mission has been to create a gaming-based therapy program
to teach these kids the skills they need to feel happier, calmer, and braver,
and to make friends and keep them.
To create a program that these kids love,
that's effective,
and that taps into their fascination and interest in technology,
allowing for self-paced learning, individualised feedback,
and that's scalable.
Accessing effective treatments from skilled professionals
is one of the greatest challenges faced by families of kids with autism worldwide.
Tech therapy seemed like the perfect solution to this problem.
Little did I know this idea would form the foundation of my future career.
As an aspiring 21-year-old psychology student
here at the University of Queensland,
I wanted to do a PhD that would be a game changer
in the world of child therapy.
At the time, I was working part-time as a flute teacher
to pay for university student essentials
like nightclub entry fees, drinks, and two-minute noodles.
Working as a flute teacher,
I had the great privilege of teaching a nine-year-old boy
who was absolutely brilliant.
I'm going to refer to him as Sam.
Sam tirelessly practised his scales and flute pieces
over and over again
until they reached the point of technical perfection.
I'd never taught a student who showed such dedication and commitment.
But when Sam played the flute, it sounded robotic.
It didn't give an emotional gift to the listener or to Sam himself.
When I raised this with him, he wrinkled up his face and said,
'But, I don't understand.
The notes are just dots and dashes on the page.
Where does it say anything about emotions?'
He made a really good point:
the emotion that's communicated in music isn't clearly marked on the page.
It's a felt experience.
When I shared this story with Sam's mum,
she told me that he had an autism spectrum condition.
Sam was really smart intellectually, but he struggled a lot socially.
Other kids thought he was weird
because he was into mathematics, when they were into sports and Pokemon.
He spoke in a monotone voice, and his eye contact was a little unusual.
Other kids excluded him from games and activities.
He wasn't invited to birthday parties,
and he was the last kid to be chosen in group activities.
Sam's mum didn't know what to do.
She tried relentlessly to get him the help that he needed
but found that most professionals didn't understand
the unique social and emotional challenges that he faced.
Some even trivialised his difficulties because he was doing well academically.
Recognising the threat that Sam's social difficulties posed
to his future potential,
I desperately searched the literature
to find an effective social skills program for him.
But no such program seemed to be available.
Those that had been evaluated
generally led to minimal treatment gains,
seemed really boring for kids,
and weren't publicly available.
I dedicated myself to creating the program
that Sam and so many other kids like him desperately needed.
A fun program that didn't involve kids reading and writing
on boring black-and-white handouts full of text.
A world that kids co-created, that gave them the lifeline they needed:
The Secret Agent Society.
(Voice-over) Please enter
the International Secret Agent Society Headquarters,
where you will begin your training.
Renae Beaumont: From the start,
my vision was for a computer game to be at the cornerstone of this program.
Kids love gaming.
It seemed logical to tap into this interest,
to create a computer game to teach them social survival skills.
It couldn't be that hard, right?
Wrong.
I had no idea what I was signing up for.
I was a 21-year-old nobody in the world of academia
who had zero computer programming skills.
At the time, I couldn't even create a PowerPoint presentation
without getting help from the IT department
here at the University of Queensland.
I had a better chance of winning lotto than securing grant funding
that was significant and large enough
to fund the development of the computer game.
So, I approached the computer engineering department of a nearby university
and asked,
'Was there any chance that maybe students could create the computer game
to fulfil course requirements?'
My request was met with an enthusiastic response.
But tragically, after a year of painstaking work,
I was delivered a computer game that was riddled with bugs
and only 60% complete.
Neither I nor the students that I was working with realised
that the vision I had for this computer game
was beyond their capabilities.
At this point,
I was faced with the prospect of ditching the project altogether.
But then, I took a moment to think about why I was doing my PhD in the first place.
It wasn't to get the piece of paper or the doctor title.
It was to create something that would make a difference in kids' lives.
In the life of an 11-year-old girl who used to sit and eat lunch by herself
rather than gossiping about boys and music with her friends.
In the life of a 10-year-old boy
who used to run out of the class, crying when he couldn't do schoolwork
instead of taking a breath, asking for help, and trying his best.
In my heart, I believed that the initial significant investment
of time, energy, and money
would lead to exponential improvements in these children's lives.
So, I took on additional casual jobs,
saved hard,
and paid a team of recent IT graduates to do the computer game programming.
While the programmers worked away on the computer game
with a team of child consultants,
I developed additional program materials to help kids
to actually put the skills that they learned from the computer game into action
in daily life.
These included a therapeutic board game,
walkie-talkie voice-tone recognition game,
and helpful thoughts game.
I replaced tedious homework tasks
that were a common feature of child therapy at the time
with secret agent missions that involve kids recording evidence
to show how they use their social skills in daily life,
in a computerised journal.
I also included resources and training sessions
for parents and school staff to teach them how to help kids
to put these social skills into action in daily life.
When these resources were developed and the computer game was complete,
the trial was ready to begin.
I had many a sleepless night, worrying,
'What if parents and kids hate the program?
What if it doesn't work?
No one else had managed to create an effective therapy program.
What made me think that I could?'
But even as this doom and gloom soundtrack repeated in my head,
I continued to push forward.
And it's a good thing that I did
because the Secret Agent Society program has made a real difference
in the lives of children and families worldwide.
That girl who used to sit and eat lunch by herself?
She was invited to her first sleepover and birthday party during the program.
The boy who used to cry and give up when he couldn't do schoolwork?
He learned how to stay calm, focus, and finish it.
Three months after the program ended, he was awarded his first academic prize.
In fact, 76% of kids who had significant social difficulties
in the beginning of the program
improved to show social skills, just like other kids their age,
by the end or within five months of it finishing.
This is the most significant improvement in social skills
ever shown for a program for kids on the autism spectrum.
For the first time in their lives,
these kids were making real friends who enjoyed hanging out with them.
Their parents' vision for their future was finally coming true.
With the help of the commercialisation arm here at the University of Queensland,
I partnered with a company
to publish and distribute the program materials,
and the end result was more extraordinary than anything I could have ever imagined.
I've created an effective gaming-based therapy program
that has since touched the lives of over 10,000 children and families
in nine countries
and is being increasingly adopted in schools and clinics worldwide.
Right now, I'm working with colleagues at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York
to take the research to a whole new level.
Most of the trials done to date have been kids on the autism spectrum.
Now, we're looking at the effectiveness of the program
for kids who have other social-emotional challenges,
like anxiety disorders
and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Whole-of-class version of the program
is also being trialled in Australian schools
thanks to the Australian Cooperative Research Centre for Living with Autism.
In this trial, we're looking at the social, emotional, academic benefits
of the program for all students,
including its impact on bullying.
This is just the beginning.
By enhancing the computer game with virtual reality technology
and creating an app to alert and reward kids
for using their relaxation gadgets and social codes when they need them,
my vision is to be a leader of a tech therapy revolution,
to create the Pokemon GO of social survival skills.
What's my advice to you?
Think about the one thing in the world that you'd most like to see change
and creative ways to solve that problem.
You might not know the answer right now or how to get there,
but you're smart:
you can learn the skills that you need to
or if you prefer,
surround yourself by other people who already have those skills.
Right now,
you might be working a mind-numbing job that pays minimum wage
and be years away from finishing your degree,
but as long as you're moving in the direction of your goals,
no matter how slowly,
you are succeeding.
Thanks to Sam,
I've created something that makes kids' futures a little brighter.
By stepping outside your comfort zone,
embracing new experiences,
and persisting when you fail - which you will -
you can download your dreams from the cloud
and make a difference.
Thank you.
(Applause)