The Autism Toolbox : An Autism Resource for Scottish Schools

The Autism Toolbox will draw upon a range of practice experience, literature and research to offer guidance for authorities and schools providing for children and young people with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)

A Pilot Study with a Novel Setup for Collaborative Play of the Humanoid Robot KASPAR with children with autism

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.This article describes a pilot study in which a novel experimental setup, involving an autonomous humanoid robot, KASPAR, participating in a collaborative, dyadic video game, was implemented and tested with children with autism, all of whom had impairments in playing socially and communicating with others. The children alternated between playing the collaborative video game with a neurotypical adult and playing the same game with the humanoid robot, being exposed to each condition twice. The equipment and experimental setup were designed to observe whether the children would engage in more collaborative behaviours while playing the video game and interacting with the adult than performing the same activities with the humanoid robot. The article describes the development of the experimental setup and its first evaluation in a small-scale exploratory pilot study. The purpose of the study was to gain experience with the operational limits of the robot as well as the dyadic video game, to determine what changes should be made to the systems, and to gain experience with analyzing the data from this study in order to conduct a more extensive evaluation in the future. Based on our observations of the childrens’ experiences in playing the cooperative game, we determined that while the children enjoyed both playing the game and interacting with the robot, the game should be made simpler to play as well as more explicitly collaborative in its mechanics. Also, the robot should be more explicit in its speech as well as more structured in its interactions. Results show that the children found the activity to be more entertaining, appeared more engaged in playing, and displayed better collaborative behaviours with their partners (For the purposes of this article, ‘partner’ refers to the human/robotic agent which interacts with the children with autism. We are not using the term’s other meanings that refer to specific relationships or emotional involvement between two individuals.) in the second sessions of playing with human adults than during their first sessions. One way of explaining these findings is that the children’s intermediary play session with the humanoid robot impacted their subsequent play session with the human adult. However, another longer and more thorough study would have to be conducted in order to better re-interpret these findings. Furthermore, although the children with autism were more interested in and entertained by the robotic partner, the children showed more examples of collaborative play and cooperation while playing with the human adult.Peer reviewe

Tablets for two: how dual tablets can facilitate other-awareness and communication in learning disabled children with autism

Learning-disabled children with autism (LDA) are impaired in other-awareness, joint attention and imitation, with a poor prognosis for developing language competence. However, better joint attention and imitation skills are predictors of increased language ability. Our study demonstrates that a collaborative activity delivered on a novel dual-tablet configuration (two wifi-linked tablets) facilitates active other-awareness, incorporating imitation and communicative behaviour, in 8 LDA boys with limited or no language, aged 5 - 12 years. LDA children did a picture-sequencing activity using single and linked dual tablets, partnered by an adult or by an LDA peer. Overall, the dual-tablet configuration generated significantly more active other-awareness than children sharing a single tablet. Active other-awareness was observed in LDA peer partnerships using dual tablets, behaviour absent when peer partnerships shared a single tablet. Dual tablets facilitated more communicative behaviour in adult-child partnerships than single tablets. Hence, supporting collaborative activities in LDA children can facilitate other-awareness and communicative behaviour and adult and peer partnerships make different, but essential contributions to social-cognitive development through the collaborative process

A Spectrum of Tech: An Integrated Literature Review of Technologies to Target Social Skills in Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often have limited social or communication skills and, thus, need extra assistance in learning when and how to engage in appropriate interactions with those around them. However, because there are several different individual skills (e.g., joint attention, emotional expression, etc.) that fall under the categories of social and communication skills, and there are even more options of devices and programs to choose from within assistive technology (AT) and instructional technology (IT), it may seem daunting to find the right technology to meet a specific child’s needs and to determine whether that technology procedures lasting results. The purpose of this integrated literature review was to investigate whether devices used for social skills intervention in PreK-12 students with ASD function as either AT or IT, with the secondary goal of determining which technologies promote better maintenance and generalization than others in social skills interventions in PreK-12 students with ASD. Analysis of published research studies on Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Games, Video Modeling, Social Robots, and Wearable Assistive Technologies demonstrate that many of these technologies function as either AT or IT, depending on the context of the situation. Furthermore, it was found that certain devices, specifically Video Modeling and Social Robots, promote better maintenance and generalization

Toward emotional interactive videogames for children with autism spectrum disorder

Technology and videogames have been proven as motivating tools for working attention and complex communication skills, especially in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In this work, we present two experiences that used interactive games for promoting communication and attention. The first game considers emotions in order to measure children’s attention, concentration and satisfaction, while the second uses tangible tabletops for fostering cognitive planning. The analysis of the results obtained allows to propose a new study integrating both, in which the tangible interactive game is complemented with the emotional trainer in a way that allows identifying and classifying children’s emotion with ASD when they collaborate to solve cognitively significant and contextualized challenges. The first application proposed is an emotional trainer application in which the child can work out the seven basic emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, surprise and neutral). Further, a serious videogame is proposed: a 3D maze where the emotions can be captured. The second case study was carried out in a Special Education Center, where a set of activities for working cognitive planning was proposed. In this case, a tangible interactive tabletop was used to analyze, in students with ASD, how the communication processes with these interfaces affect to the attention, memory, successive and simultaneous processing that compose cognitive planning from the PASS model. The results of the first study, suggest that the autistic children did not act with previous planning, but they used their perception to adjust their actions a posteriori (that explains the higher number of collisions). On the second case study, the successive processing was not explored. The inclusion of the mazes of case study 1 to a semantic rich scenario could allow us to measure the prior planning and the emotions involved in the maze game. The new physiological sensors will also help to validate the emotions felt by the children. The first study has as objective the capability to imitate emotions and resolve a maze without semantic context. The second study organized all the actions from a semantic context close to users. The attention results presented by the second study are coherent with the first study and complement it showing that attention can be receptive or selective. In the first study case, the receptive attention was the focus of analysis. In the second case, both contributed to explain and understand how it can be developed from a videogame

The use of tablets to encourage the development of joint attention skills in children with autism spectrum disorder

The aim of this research was to explore ways in which iPads and other mobile tablets can be used in the classroom and home environment to support children with autism spectrum disorder in the area of joint attention skills. It focused on understanding the nature and importance of these skills in children with autism according to the participants’ experiences and on investigating the use and potential of mobile tablets in contributing to the development of joint attention skills. The research drew upon the transactional model of child development and followed an action research design. Reflection on the initial findings generated plans for change, which then shaped the next stages of the research. Interviews, observations, focus groups studies were carried out to investigate the level of understanding of joint attention skills and how their development is currently supported in the classroom and home environment; and to observe such support in the classroom especially when mediated through iPads. These studies, together with focus groups with key stakeholders led to the development of guidelines on how teachers and parents can use mobile tablets to support the development of joint attention skills in home and primary schools (Reception-Key Stage 2). These were developed and refined in consultation with teachers, parents, children and academics. This was the first study that measured the number of times children initiated and responded to joint attention and the number of times teachers used strategies to gain, sustain and redirect a child’s attention with and without the use of technology in a school setting.The findings showed that children were more times engaged in joint attention when using the iPads than without. The participants were not familiar with the term joint attention but used the term social communication to refer to the child’s ability to share interest, keep eye contact, take turns in an interaction or game, follow gaze and pointing, understand other’s feelings and interact with others by using symbols, speech or gestures. Both parents and teachers used evidence based strategies when interacting with the children but the need for guidance on how to use the mobile tablets was highlighted. The proposed guidelines include evidence based strategies, tablet based activities, and criteria on how to select mobile applications. They aim to help teachers reflect on and improve their teaching practice, as well as urge parents to use the tablet with their child in more collaborative ways. It is suggested that future studies should focus on bridging the gap between theory and practice by investigating the practitioners’ perspectives and experiences in developing joint attention and social communication skills in children with autism with the use of mobile interactive technologies in naturalistic settings

An investigation of other-awareness and the collaborative process in low-functioning children with autism using shareable technology

Very little is known about the ability of low-functioning children with autism (LFA) to engage in collaborative activities. Children with autism have deficits in other-awareness, joint attention and imitation, skills considered fundamental in social cognition and associated with the ability to collaborate. Research has focused on identifying the impairments of LFA children’s social interactional abilities in controlled experimental contexts with adult partners. However, there is a paucity of research investigating if LFA children can participate in collaborative activity with peers, and if so what form the collaborative behaviour takes. Children with autism are highly motivated to interact with technology and technology is evolving fast offering opportunities to apply it to research. Therefore, we used innovative technology and a novel software architecture called Separate Control of Shared Space (SCoSS) on three types of shareable computer technology to aid our investigation of other-awareness and collaboration in LFA children. Paper 1, describes two studies using a dual-control laptop to present picture-sorting tasks to children paired with an adult and peer. SCoSS was more effective at facilitating other-awareness in TD and LFA children than a standard interface. Crucially, LFA children showed no active other-awareness without the supportive interface. Paper 2 presented two different picture-sorting problems for pairs of LFA children to solve. This yielded a model of collaborative problem-solving based on a sequence of three prerequisite capacities. Paper 3 successfully applied the SCoSS framework to picture-sequencing tasks delivered via tablet technology. As in paper 1, pairs of LFA children were only actively aware of a peer using linked dual-tablets, analogous to SCoSS. In summary, the thesis presents evidence that the other-awareness of LFA children can be facilitated by technology to support collaborative problem-solving, providing a more complete profile of their abilities and offers evidence that LFA are sensitive to the type of collaborative partner

Neuroaffirmative Approaches to Extended Reality: Empowering Individuals with Autism Spectrum Condition through Immersive Learning Environments

Traditional teaching and working environments often prioritize extroverted qualities, disadvantaging individuals with conditions that impact social engagement, such as autism spectrum condition (ASC). These individuals usually thrive in calmer, low-key learning environments but face challenges in lecture-style classes, and traditional office environments leading to marginalization in academic and professional settings. This study explores the neuroaffirming potential of extended reality (XR) in creating immersive learning and working environments tailored to the unique needs of individuals with ASC. By focusing on four key factors—indirect social engagement, digital communication preferences, sensory sensitivity, and avatar-based communication—XR technologies can provide a supportive and accommodating environment for those with sensory processing disorders (SPD). As the metaverse and virtual reality (VR) technology advances, education and industry can harness social VR to prepare students for a future of work defined by virtual collaboration. This research investigates the transformative role of XR and the metaverse in promoting a more inclusive educational and professional landscape by adapting environments to empower individuals with ASC, enabling them to reach their full potential in a neuroaffirmative manner