Assistive Technology to Improve Collaboration in Children with ASD: State-of-the-Art and Future Challenges in the Smart Products Sector

Within the field of products for autism spectrum disorder, one of the main research areas is focused on the development of assistive technology. Mid and high-tech products integrate interactive and smart functions with multisensory reinforcements, making the user experience more intuitive, adaptable, and dynamic. These products have a very significant impact on improving the skills of children with autism, including collaboration and social skills, which are essential for the integration of these children into society and, therefore, their well-being. This work carried out an exhaustive analysis of the scientific literature, as well as market research and trends, and patent analysis to explore the state-of-the-art of assistive technology and smart products for children with ASD, specifically those aimed at improving social and communication skills. The results show a reduced availability of products that act as facilitators of the special needs of children with ASD, which is even more evident for products aimed at improving collaboration skills. Products that allow the participation of several users simultaneously through multi-user interfaces are required. On top of this, the trend toward virtual environments is leading to a loss of material aspects in the design that are essential for the development of these children

Rafigh: A Living Media System for Motivating Target Application Use for Children

Digital living media systems combine living media such as plants, animals and fungi with computational components. In this dissertation, I respond to the question of how can digital living media systems better motivate children to use target applications (i.e., learning and/or therapeutic applications)? To address this question, I employed a participatory design approach where I incorporated input from children, parents, speech language pathologists and teachers into the design of a new system. Rafigh is a digital embedded system that uses the growth of a living mushrooms colony to provide positive reinforcements to children when they conduct target activities. The growth of the mushrooms is affected by the amount of water administered to them, which in turn corresponds to the time children spend on target applications. I used an iterative design process to develop and evaluate three Rafigh prototypes. The evaluations showed that the system must be robust, customizable, and should include compelling engagement mechanisms to keep the children interested. I evaluated Rafigh using two case studies conducted in participants homes. In each case study, two siblings and their parent interacted with Rafigh over two weeks and the parents identified a series of target applications that Rafigh should motivate the children to use. The study showed that Rafigh motivated the children to spend significantly more time on target applications during the intervention phase and that it successfully engaged one out of two child participants in each case study who showed signs of responsibility, empathy and curiosity towards the living media. The study showed that the majority of participants described the relationship between using target applications and mushrooms growth correctly. Further, Rafigh encouraged more communication and collaboration between the participants. Rafighs slow responsivity did not impact the engagement of one out of two child participants in each case study and might even have contributed to their investment in the project. Finally, Rafighs presence as an ambient physical object allowed users to interact with it freely and as part of their home environment

The Effects of a Peer-Mediated Social Skills Intervention on the Social Communication Behavior of Children with Autism at Recess

Children with ASD face enormous challenges in the area of social functioning. Research has shown that impairments in social functioning distinguish this population from both typically developing children and children with disabilities. Fortunately, multiple techniques and intervention packages have been demonstrated to effectively increase appropriate social communication between children with ASD and their peers at school. Another challenge that adults working with children with ASD face is the problem of generalization. Social skills taught during structured social skill groups, for example, may not generalize to natural settings. This study incorporated several social skills-teaching procedures from the literature (direct instruction, priming, prompting, peer-mediation, contingent reinforcement, and token economies) to target social skills for four children with ASD (ages 6-8) directly in the recess setting. Elements of Peer Networks and Pivotal Response Training (two types of social skills intervention packages in the literature) were included. Results show significant increases in social communication between focus children and their peers, as well as generalization of skills to non-intervention recesses

Charlie: A New Robot Prototype for Improving Communication and social Skills in Children with Autism and a New Single-point Infrared Sensor Technique for Detecting bBeathing and Heart Rate Remotely

This research delivers a new, interactive game-playing robot named CHARLIE and a novel technique for remotely detecting breathing and heart rate using a single-point, thermal infrared sensor (IR). The robot is equipped with a head and two arms, each with two degrees of freedom, and a camera. We trained a human hands classifier and used this classifier along with a standard face classifier to create two autonomous interactive games: single-player ( Imitate Me, Imitate You ) and two-player ( Pass the Pose ). Further, we developed and implemented a suite of new interactive games in which the robot is teleoperated by remote control. Each of these features has been tested and validated through a field study including eight children diagnosed with autism and speech delays. Results from that study show that significant improvements in speech and social skills can be obtained when using CHARLIE with the methodology described herein. Moreover, gains in communication and social interaction are observed to generalize from child-to-robot to co-present others through the scaffolding of communication skills with the systematic approach developed for the study. Additionally, we present a new IR system that continuously targets the sub-nasal region of the face and measures subtle temperature changes corresponding to breathing and cardiac pulse. This research makes four novel contributions: (1) A low-cost, field-tested robot for use in autism therapy, (2) a suite of interactive robot games, (3) a hand classifier created for performing hand detection during the interactive games, and (4) an IR sensor system which remotely collects temperatures and computes breathing and heart rate. Interactive robot CHARLIE is physically designed to be aesthetically appealing to young children between three and six years of age. The hard, wood and metal robot body is covered with a bright green, fuzzy material and additional padding so that it appears toylike and soft. Additionally, several structural features were included to ensure safety during interactive play and to enhance the robustness of the robot. Because children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often enjoy exploring new or interesting objects with their hands, the robot must be able to withstand a moderate amount of physical manipulation without causing injury to the child or damaging the robot or its components. CHARLIE plays five distinct interactive games that are designed to be entertaining to young children, appeal to children of varying developmental ability and promote increased speech and social skill through imitation and turn-taking. Remote breathing and heart rate detection Stress is a compounding factor in autism therapy which can inhibit progress toward specific therapeutic goals. The ability to non-invasively detect physical indicators of increasing stress, especially when they can be correlated to specific activities and measured in terms of length and frequency, can relay important metrics about the antecedents that cause stress for a particular child and can be used to help automate the evaluation of a child\u27s progress between sessions. Further, collecting and measuring critical physiological indicators such as breathing and heart rate can enable robots to adjust their behavior based on the perceived emotional, psychological or physical state of their user. The utility and acceptance of robots can be further increased when they are able to learn typical physiological patterns and use these patterns as a baseline for identifying anomalies or possible warning signs of various problems in their human users. We present a new technique for remotely collecting and analyzing breathing and heart rates in real time using an autonomous, low cost infrared (IR) sensor system. This is accomplished by continuously targeting a high precision IR sensor, tracking changes in the sub-nasal skin surface temperature and employing a sinusoidal curve-fitting function, Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), and Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) to extract the breathing and heart rate from recorded temperatures

Using Virtual Reality Devices with Autistic Students in High School to Teach Social Communication Skills

Study Abstract Title: Using Virtual Reality Devices with Autistic Students in High School to Teach Social Communication Skills Proposed Study: The purpose of this research is to determine whether using virtual reality to teach social skills will improve the conversation skills of high school students with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Specifically, the study will look at the conversation skills of ASD students by monitoring their performance on greeting, conversation, and closing skills in conversations prior to, during, and after the instruction. The aim of this study is to determine if the face to face communication skills of the participants will improve when the student is immersed in the virtual world. The study will be conducted during the students’ social skills class, and individual progress will be monitored by teachers with the use of checklists

Feeling Factory: a Prosody Improvement Game for Children with ASD

Previous research has shown that children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) tend to struggle with correctly identifying and producing prosodic cues and may have a predilection for using computer and games. However, there are currently no digital games that target prosody production and perception. The design of the digital game Feeling Factory explores how to combine prosodic speech therapy techniques with game design techniques. The goal of the game is to improve emotional and grammatical, productive and receptive prosody in high-functioning children with ASD. Feeling Factory uses a two-player design in order to balance engagement via the digital game with contextual generalizability via in-person conversation. A feasibility study was conducted consisting of semi-structured interviews with a panel of experts and children with ASD to help determine the potential benefits of this design model. The study resulted in a high recommendation from both groups.M.S., Digital Media -- Drexel University, 201

Stay, Play, and Talk: A Peer-Mediated Social Skills Program for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Other Social Communication Difficulties (Phase IV)

Stay, Play, And Talk: A Peer-Mediated Social Skills Program for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Other Social Communication Difficulties is in its fourth phase of research within a Kindergarten classroom in Ontario, Canada. Its purpose was to introduce a peer-mediated social skills program while observing the effects on peer-to-peer socialization operations and skills increases for those children identified as having social communication difficulties or the characteristics of ASD. Results indicate that all three participants demonstrated an increase in their social communication skills with their typically-developing peers

The Effectiveness of the Picture Exchange Communication System for Children Who Have Autism

The effectiveness of the picture exchange communication system for children who have autism

The Use of Music Stimulation to Increase On-Task Behavior in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Language Processing Disorder

Previous research has investigated the effect of music stimulation on children with autism (Boso, Emanuele, Minazzi, Abbamonte, & Politi, 2007; Brownell, 2002; Finnigan & Starr, 2010; Kuhlman & Schweinhart (n.d.); Lundqvist, Andersson, & Viding, 2009; Orr, Myles, & Carlson, 1998; Wood, 1991) with mixed results. The National Standards project has categorized music therapy as an emerging treatment methodology, indicating that more research is needed to fully examine its effectiveness when used in intervention for individuals with autism (National Autism Center, 2012). Reviews of the literature have indicated that children with language processing disorder may also benefit from music stimulation (Geist, McCarthy, Rodgers-Smith, & Porter, 2008). However, additional evidence is warranted to reliably evaluate the effect of music stimulation on focus during therapy sessions. The current study was conducted to examine the effect of music stimulation on on-task behaviors in a child with autism spectrum disorder and a child with language processing disorder. The subjects were two five year old males receiving individual speech and language services at Eastern Illinois University\u27 s (EIU) Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic (Clinic). One male was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and the other with language processing disorder. Instrumental music was presented to both subjects via a laptop computer during regularly scheduled speech and language therapy. Both subjects were exposed to music stimulation for fifteen minutes of the therapy session. The frequency of task-related verbalizations, non-task related verbalizations, teacher/clinician prompts, and physically disruptive behavior was recorded when music stimulation was present and absent. Results of the study revealed no significant difference between the frequency of dependent variables when music was present, as opposed to its absence. Raw data suggested that participant 1 showed more focused behaviors when music stimulation was present, and participant 2 was consistently focused during both conditions. These findings suggest that music stimulation might be an effective methodology to facilitate productive behavior during treatment sessions for communication disorders. Additional research is necessary to further investigate the beneficial aspects of music stimulation