Building an Intelligent, Authorable Serious Game for Autistic Children and Their Carers

Abstract

Abstract. This paper introduces the SHARE-IT project, which leverages serious games paradigm to motivate and engage children with autism diagnosis in interactive activities, based on the state-of-the-art autism intervention practices. The aim of SHARE-IT is to formulate, in partnership with schools, parents and industry, the requirements for a robust, intelligent and authorable environment for supporting children in exploring, practicing and acquiring social interaction skills. SHARE-IT focuses on two key challenges: (i) developing robust system architecture and implementation, able to support both continuing development of a serious game for children with autism and its real world use; and (ii) selecting appropriate technologies and techniques to allow for (a) multi-device and operating system deployment, (b) the development of an intelligent serious game for supporting social interaction while (c) allowing the flexibility for the environment to be authored by lay persons. SHARE-IT's architecture is presented and several considerations of importance to enabling the engineering of an intelligent and authorable serious game are discussed. Examples of technologies developed to date are given throughout and a discussion of future challenges offered.

Domain-Specific Inhibitory Control Training to Improve Children’s Learning of Counterintuitive Concepts in Mathematics and Science

“…task novelty, repeated practice, and increasing challenge) reported in reviews of the cognitive training literature, were also carefully considered (Bryck & Fisher, 2012 ; Diamond & Ling, 2016 ; Green et al, 2018 ). Research in technology-enhanced learning, including work in the area of digital game-based learning (Holmes, 2017 ; Howard-Jones et al, 2014 ; Howard-Jones et al, 2016 ) and intelligent learning environments (Grawmayer et al, 2015; Mavrikis et al, 2013 ; Bernardini et al, 2014 ; Porayska-Pomsta et al, 2018 ; Porayska-Pomsta et al, 2013 ), allowed us to optimise the computer platform to support learning.…”

Nuevas tecnologías: Puentes de comunicación en el trastorno del espectro autista (TEA)

“…Así, almacenar material audiovisual y vincularlo al contexto en el cual el niño con TEA se desenvuelve de la manera que considere más oportuna, deben estar bien definidos, identificados y ubicados para que el niño los pueda manipular cuando sea el momento oportuno y los encuentre de manera acorde a él, donde la intervención en el desarrollo no sólo debe descansar en las cuestiones técnicas sino también poder involucrar al entorno familiar de la persona, siempre y cuando sea esto posible (Porayska-Pomsta et al, 2013;Wass y Porayska-Pomsta, 2014).…”

“…Los programas específicos en entornos educativos o de aprendizaje terapéutico, son consistentes en la definición de tareas definidas, lo cual reduce las distracciones por estímulos sensoriales innecesarios y focaliza la atención en el desarrollo de las actividades, generando también un entorno con ayudas visuales y atractivas tanto para el niño como para los terapeutas (Porayska-Pomsta et al, 2013;Wass y Porayska-Pomsta, 2014).…”

Multi-Touch Collaborative Gesture Recognition Based User Interfaces as Behavioral Interventions for Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder: A Review

“…[22], [23], [24] [25], [26], [27] [28], [29], [30] [31], [32], [33] [34], [35] [34], [36] [37], [38], [39] [40], [41], [42] [43], [44] [45], [46], [47], [48] FIG. 1 Attempts have already been made by researchers in this field to divert the attention of HCI experts towards easy use of search engines and digital libraries by children [6].…”