Dialogue Design for a Robot-Based Face-Mirroring Game to Engage Autistic Children with Emotional Expressions

We present design strategies for Human Robot Interaction for school-aged autistic children with limited receptive language. Applying these strategies to the DE-ENIGMA project (large EU project addressing emotion recognition in autistic children) supported development of a new activity for in facial expression imitation whereby the robot imitates the child’s face to encourage the child to notice facial expressions in a play-based game. A usability case study with 15 typically-developing children aged 4–6 at an English-language school in the Netherlands was performed to observe the feasibility of the setup and make design revisions before exposing the robot to autistic children

The effect of audio recordings and photographs of autistic and typical children on social judgments

In a counterbalanced, 2x2 mixed factorial design, 61 randomly assigned participants rated two audio recordings and two photographs of autistic or typical children. The hypothesis was that participants would judge autistic children most negatively when listening to audio recordings of them, but that they would judge photographs of autistic and typical children similarly. The two-way mixed ANOVA found a statistically significant main effect for the autistic versus typical child, but no statistically significant main effect for type of medium (recording vs. picture) nor interaction effect. This points to autistic children being judged more negatively in comparison to their typical peers, although it is unclear how those judgments are being determined, and has implications for diagnosis and therapeutic success

Playful E-textile Sonic Interaction for Socially Engaged and Open-Ended Play Between Autistic Children

Research on the potential benefits of technology for autistic children is an emergent field in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), especially within the Child-Computer Interaction Community. This thesis contributes a design approach grounded in theories of play, cognitive development, and autism to expand the discourse on methodological guidelines for performing empirical studies with non-verbal autistic children and to extend the design space to cater to the socio-emotional and sensory needs of this population. The thesis reveals how sonic e-textile Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) can be used effectively to mediate children’s social participation in playful activities. This is demonstrated through developing three explorative field-studies conducted at a specialist school based in North-East London where two sonic e-textile playful TUIs, namely Mazi and Olly, have been created and tested with three groups of autistic children aged between 5-10. The three studies ran over the period of three years and were designed to investigate the potentials of TUIs as shareable toys during leisure and recreational activities to a) support social and playful interactions among peers and b) provide opportunities for self-regulation. The key contributions of this thesis are the designs of two tangible user interfaces, which offer a set of design approaches to guide researchers through creating shareable and playful tangibles for non-verbal autistic children; a framework for analysis and a thorough evaluation process that other researchers could use to assess the efficacy of playful TUI designs for nonverbal autistic children; and an in-depth discussion about the research process, which offers a new perspective about holistic designs and evaluation of technologies that aim to scaffold play in groups non-verbal autistic children

Terapi Applied Behavior Analysis Meningkatkan Kemampuan Interaksi Sosial pada Anak Autisme Umur 7-12 Tahun

This study aims to determine the effect of applied behavior analysis therapy on social interaction in children with autism aged 7-12 years at SDLB SLB Negeri 2 Buleleng. The type of this research is pre-experimental research with one group pre-post test design. The results of the univariate analysis, most of the respondents were male 53 respondents (85.5%), the level of moderate social interaction was 46 respondents (74.2%) autistic children before being given treatment, and the high level of social interaction was 40 respondents (64, 5%) autistic children after being given treatment. The results of this study indicate an effect of Applied Behavior Analysis therapy with a high level of social interaction totaling 40 respondents (64.5%) of autistic children after being given treatment. The results of data analysis with the Wilcoxon test get a value of 0.000 or p <α (0.05). In conclusion, Applied Behavior Analysis therapy has an effect on social interaction in children with autism aged 7-12 years at SDLB SLB Negeri 2 Buleleng.   Keywords: Applied Behavior Analysis, Autism, Social Interactio

Neurotypical interventions : a neurodiverse approach to school-based social communication support

Working within a neurodiversity paradigm, this project will investigate potential differences in how autistic and neurotypical (NT) children interact with each other (A-A and NT-NT), and between-groups (A-NT). It will also consider whether autistic and NT individuals perceive these social interactions differently. Interactions will be coded while children recount a social scenario story, and jointly complete a spaghetti tower task along a diffusion chain. A diffusion chain design will be used as it allows cumulative effects of transmission, which are not always apparent in dyadic settings, to be examined. Ten NT and ten autistic adults will code the interactions to see if there are differences in how they are perceived depending on the autistic diagnosis. Autistic and NT children within the interactions will also be asked about their experiences of the interaction to examine synergies and differences from alternative perspectives. The information from these studies will inform the production of a resource for use in the classroom to support the social and emotional development of autistic and NT children. This resource will help autistic children develop an understanding of NT children’s thoughts and behaviours, and assist NT children in their understanding of these in autistic children

Human-Centered Design with Autistic University Students: Interface, Interaction and Information Preferences

This paper reports on a study aimed at creating an online support toolkit for young autistic people to navigate the transition from school to university, thereby empowering this group in developing their full potential. It is part of the Autism&Uni project, a European-funded initiative to widen access to Higher Education for students on the autism spectrum. Our particular focus is on the Human-Computer Interaction elements of the toolkit, namely the visual design of the interface, the nature of interactions and navigation, and the information architecture. Past research in this area tended to focus on autistic children, often with learning difficulties, and their preferences in terms of interface and interaction design. Our research revealed that the preferences of young autistic adults who are academically competent and articulate, differ considerably from those of autistic children. Key findings are that text is preferred over visual material; visual design should be minimal; content ought to be organized in a logical and hierarchical manner; the tone of language ought to be genuine yet not too negative or patronizing; and images or video are only useful if they illustrate places or people, in other words information that cannot easily be conveyed in other ways

Application of DTT (Discrete Trail Training) Method in Improving the Eye Contact Ability of Autistic Children

Autistic children are children who have developmental disorders that affect several aspects which include communication, social interaction, sensory disorders, play patterns, behavior, linguistics, perception, cognitive, and emotional. Usually these autistic children are less interested in making social contact and lack of eye contact. Autistic children’s problems are still low in eye contact so that it has an impact on behavior and social at school, because of the lack of teacher knowledge about autistic children and teachers who handle children currently do not have an extraordinary teacher education background. For this reason, the application of DTT (Discrete Trail Training) Method is very suitable to increase eye contact ability to attract children’s attention. The purpose of this research was to determine the application of DTT (Discrete Trail Training) method in improving the eye contact ability of autistic children. This research used a quantitative approach with SSR method or known as Single Subject Research. The research design used was the A-B-A reversal design. The subjects in this research were autistic children in sixth grade at SLB Negeri Pelambuan Banjarmasin. Data collection used event recording system or direct observation and documentation, data analysis techniques include analysis in conditions and analysis between conditions using descriptive statistics. The results of the research show that the mean level in the Baseline (A1) phase is 4.8 seconds, in the intervention phase (B) is 6.6 seconds and in the Baseline (A2) phase is 7.6 seconds. Thus, it can be concluded that there is an increase in the ability of eye contact of autistic children in SLB Negeri Pelambuan Banjarmasin after DTT (Discrete Trail Training) Method is applied

PERILAKU HIPERAKTIF ANAK AUTIS MELALUI TERAPI MUSIK

Abstract Autistic children have complex development problems in their communication, social interaction, and iimaginative activity. They also have problem in their communicaton, social interaction, sensory problem, play roles, behavior and emotion. Behavior problem is the most common problem for the autistic children. There are many problem caused by autistic children, such as hyperactive or hypoactive behavior. Music role in behavior development is as the basic in creating good manners, feelings, ,oral, good behavior, love, and soft feelings. Music also can affect the childern’s cognitive development and make them be able to socialize and have good behavior. This research aims ti find out the decreaseases of hyperactive behavior after applaying music teraphy in the form of children song. This research is a single subject research design. There is one autistic child at Pediatricia Tumbuh Kembang Clinic Mojokerto. The data collecting technique used is observation. The data analysis technique used are intra visual condition and inter visual condition. The result shows that the duration to decrease autistic childern’s hyperactive behavior in baseline phase is 13-21 minutes. It becomes 13-15 minutes after applaying music by letting the children listen to the children song in the learning and traching process. Based on the intra visual condition analysis, it shows the better changing. Based on the inter visual conditions shows there is an effect for the targeted behavior. It can be concluded that music therapy can decrease the autistic childern’s behavior.Keywords : music therapy, hyperactive behavio

Using affective avatars and rich multimedia content for education of children with autism

Autism is a communication disorder that mandates early and continuous educational interventions on various levels like the everyday social, communication and reasoning skills. Computer-aided education has recently been considered as a likely intervention method for such cases, and therefore different systems have been proposed and developed worldwide. In more recent years, affective computing applications for the aforementioned interventions have also been proposed to shed light on this problem. In this paper, we examine the technological and educational needs of affective interventions for autistic persons. Enabling affective technologies are visited and a number of possible exploitation scenarios are illustrated. Emphasis is placed in covering the continuous and long term needs of autistic persons by unobtrusive and ubiquitous technologies with the engagement of an affective speaking avatar. A personalised prototype system facilitating these scenarios is described. In addition the feedback from educators for autistic persons is provided for the system in terms of its usefulness, efficiency and the envisaged reaction of the autistic persons, collected by means of an anonymous questionnaire. Results illustrate the clear potential of this effort in facilitating a very promising autism intervention