'Reporter Game' Might Help Autistic Kids Manage Sensory Overload

THURSDAY, Sept. 24, 2026 (HealthDay News) — A “reporter game” might help autistic children manage anxiety from sensations such as the feel of scratchy fabric or the abrasive honk of a car alarm, a new study says.

Children playing this game are taught to evaluate potentially disturbing sensations objectively, sticking to facts as a news reporter would, researchers said.

MRI scans showed that this strategy reduces activity in the brain’s sensory regions, which could help children with autism better manage distress, researchers reported recently in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

“For years we've been identifying what's happening in the brain,” senior researcher Shulamite Green, an associate professor-in-residence of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at UCLA, said in a news release. “This is us finally getting to the point where we can test for possible treatments.”

For the study, researchers recruited 47 autistic and 45 typically developing kids ages 8 to 15.

The participants had unpleasant textures, including artificial grass and scratchy wool, rubbed on their forearms while an MDI scanner tracked their brain activity.

Prior to the scan, all the kids were taught the reporter game, which involves a therapy technique called cognitive reappraisal. The tactic teaches children to change the way they think about something in order to change how it feels to them.

Activity in the brain’s sensory regions dropped significantly when the children with autism played the reporter game versus when they focused solely on how the texture felt.

Both groups also showed more activity in areas at the front of the brain that help regulate emotional responses, the study said.

Typically developing children might use those frontal regions of the brain to regulate sensory responses, but autistic children might have a developmental delay that interferes with that response, Green said.

The study did find that only typically developing kids rated the texture as less unpleasant when using the reporter game. Even though their brain patterns changed, autistic children still rated the sensation as unpleasant when using the tactic.

It might take time for this approach to reduce irritation from an annoying sensation among autistic kids, Green said. 

This strategy is already a standard part of cognitive behavioral therapy, which means it could be easily incorporated into existing treatments aimed at helping kids with autism, Green said.

“We know cognitive behavioral therapy interventions work for anxiety and emotional responses, so there is no need to reinvent the wheel,” Green said.

The next step in research will be to test the reporter game in real-world settings to see if it helps, researchers said.

More information

Autism Speaks has more on sensory issues with autism.

SOURCE: UCLA, news release, Sept. 21, 2026