Can LANA CITS Support Learning in Autistic Children? A case study evaluation

LANA CITS is a Conversational Intelligent Tutoring System that uses the Visual, Auditory, and Kinaesthetic learning style (VAK). It supports learning in autistic pupils, who are studying in mainstream primary schools. Facilitating the learning of these pupils using traditional teaching within mainstream schools is complex and poorly understood. This paper present investigation into how LANA CITS using VAK learning style model can adapt to autistic pupils learning style and improve their learning in mainstream schools. This paper provides a case study evaluation of three children with high-functioning autism examining the effectiveness of learning with LANA CITS. The case study took place in primary school in Saudi Arabia. The results were positive with the students engaged in the tutorial and the teacher noticed some improvement over classroom activities. This results support for the continuing development, evaluation, and use of CITS for pupils with autism in mainstream schools

Virtual Reality Interaction Techniques For Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Virtual reality (VR) systems are seeing growing use for training individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Although these systems indicate effective use of VR for training, there is little work in the literature evaluating different VR interaction techniques for this audience. In this paper, different VR interaction techniques are explored in the Virtual Reality for Vocational Rehabilitation (VR4VR) system and additional data analysis on top of our previously published preliminary results [1] was performed via a user study with nine individuals with ASD and ten neurotypical individuals. The participants tried six vocational training modules of the VR4VR system. In these modules, tangible object manipulation, haptic device, touch and snap and touchscreen were tested for object selection and manipulation; real walking and walk-in-place were tested for locomotion; and head mounted display and curtain screen were tested for display. Touchscreen and tangible interaction methods were preferred by the individuals with ASD. The walk-in-place locomotion technique were found frustrating and difficult to perform by the individuals with ASD. Curtain display received higher preference scores from individuals with ASD although they accepted the HMD as well. The observations and findings of the study are expected to give insight into the poorly explored area of experience of individuals with ASD with various interaction techniques in VR