Designing and evaluating touchless playful interaction for ASD children

Abstract

Limited studies exist that explore motion-based touchless applications for children with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) and investigate their design issues and the benefits they can bring to this target group. The paper reports a structured set of design guidelines that distill our experience gained from empirical studies and collaborations with therapeutic centers. These heuristics informed the design of three touchless games that were evaluated in a controlled study involving medium functioning ASD children at a therapeutic center. Our findings confirm the potential of motion-based touchless applications games in technology-enhanced interventions for this target group. BACKGROUNDThe Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a general term for a group of complex disorders of brain development, characterized, in varying degrees, by difficulties in social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication and repetitive behaviors often accompanied by sensorimotor impairments. Autism, estimated to affect 1 of every 88 children, is marked by the presence of impairments along a triad of dimensions: social interaction, communication, and imagination. Children with autism show a great variance of symptoms, ranging from a delay or a total lack of spoken language to a severe impairment in the use of nonverbal behaviors that regulate social interaction, to a failure to develop peer relationships appropriate to age. ASD children also show imagination inability, manifested in the difficulty to generalize between environments, in a limited range of imaginative activities and in a difficulty in figuring out future events and abstract ideas. This reflects to a lack of spontaneous make-believe play or social imitative play and tendency to repetitive and stereotyped patterns of activity. Other behavioral symptoms include hyperactivity, short attention span, impulsivity, aggressiveness, self-injurious behavior, and temper tantrums. Studies conducted to consider the effectiveness of digital technologies for ASD children reveal that these tools are in general well received [16]. A digital environment provides stimuli that are more focused, predictable, and replicable than conventional tools. It also reduces the confusing, multi-sensory distractions of the real world that may induce anxiety and create barriers to social communication. In addition, digital tools can exploit the benefits of visually based interventions adopted in existing therapeutic practices such as video modeling [6]. Existing products and prototypes for autistic children exploit a variety of technologies and interaction modes, from desktop to multitouch mobile devices, tangibles and digitally augmented objects, robots [11], and more recently, touchless motion based environments, enabling users to interact using body movements without any physical contact with digital tools. The goal of our research is to design, develop and evaluate touchless motion based games that can be used for educational and therapeutic purposes in different contexts -school, therapeutic center, home...

Technology-Facilitated Diagnosis and Treatment of Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder: An Engineering Perspective

“…In recent years, motion-based touchless serious games can be played using game consoles (selected from commercial games appropriate for children with ASD) [22][23][24], or via computer systems [25]. Different from traditional serious games, this type of games engage the full body movements of the participants.…”

“…Design guidelines for serious games for children with ASD were laid out in [25]. Even though it was introduced in the context of motion-based touchless games, they appear to be applicable for all serious games.…”

“…In [25], Bartoli et al divided the avatars used in their study into three categories: (1) articulated avatar, where the body parts are represented using lines and simple shapes, which is similar to a stick figure; (2) pointing avatar, where the body can move along a single direction; (3) real avatar, where the avatar is a silhouette of a real person. In other papers, a virtual avatar is typically referred to as a synthetic human character [52].…”

Classification for Motion Game Based on EEG Sensing

“…Moreover, the motion sensor based interface system cannot show user's mental activity such as engagement situation (positive or negative), tiredness state and so on, which are very important in education and medical care situations. The motions also couldn't be always performed well for the children and elders [1]. To settle this problem, BCI and motion technologies are both integrated together with follow two devices: (1) OpenBCI, which is an open source software framework for brain-computer interfaces.…”

“…cos cos θ θ (1) where θ Y is the angle between joint vector vi and positive X-axis and viy denotes the Y component of vi. θ YZ is the angle between the projection of the vector on XZ-plane and X-axis.…”