Enhancing Social Communication in High-Functioning Children with Autism through a Co-Located Interface

Abstract

In this paper we describe a pilot study for an reality therefore making ineffective the use of this type of intervention ained at enhancing social skills in high functioning technology [7]. children with autism. We found initial evidences that the use of aIn a previous study [9], we experimented with a co-located social interaction and may lessen the repetitive behaviors typical interface where pairs of children (not affected by of autism. These positive effects also appear to be transferred to developmental disorders) interacted to construct a common other tasks following the intervention. We hypothesize that the story. The interface was explicitly designed to "enforce effect is due to some unique characteristics of the interfaces used, collaboration" by requiring that some activities be performed in particular enforcing some tasks to be done together through together by the children. The design hypothesis, partially the use of multiple-user GUI actions.confirmed, was that forcing joint behavior on the interface

A Pilot Study with a Novel Setup for Collaborative Play of the Humanoid Robot KASPAR with Children with Autism

“…Three pairs of children diagnosed with high-functioning autism played with this interface multiple times per week over the course of three weeks, and the researchers found that after participating in all of the play sessions, the children displayed more social behaviours such as making eye contact, positive affect while making eye contact, and sharing emotions than they did beforehand. [8]. Additionally, the children displayed fewer stereotypically "autistic" behaviours while playing with the StoryTable than they did while participating in other activities, and also spent more time playing social games, whether simple or complex, as well as less time playing in parallel with another child after participating in the study [25].…”

Interactive Technologies for Autistic Children: A Review

“…Increased realism [Herrera G, 2008], [Bauminger N, 2007] would influence the degree of ecological validity achieved and subsequent degree of skill transfer. Increasing in complexity, touch-screen technology has facilitated human-computer interaction without a traditional mouse or joystick.…”

“…Diamond-Touch technology was integrated with the Story Table interface to allow multiple children to create an imaginative story together by selecting, combining and sequencing a series of on-screen virtual characters and events. Some story elements required 2 children to touch the screen before they were integrated into the story, reinforcing joint attention, communication and negotiation.Authors in [Bauminger N, 2007] evaluated this system with 3 dyads (a dyad is composed of 2 children with autism), aged 9-11 years old, to teach and reinforce key social skills, such as eye contact, turn-taking, sharing and joint directed behavior. During the intervention, the dyads were instructed to create and narrate stories using backgrounds and characters that were jointly chosen.…”

Desenvolvimento E Avaliação De Um Jogo Em Dispositivos Móveis Para Estimular a Comunicação De Crianças Com Autismo

“…Dentre eles, encontram-se trabalhos naárea de interação social (Silva, 2012), robótica (Robins et al, 2005), realidade virtual (Millen et al, 2010) (Parsons and Mitchell, 2002) e comunicação (Bauminger et al, 2007) (Cunha, 2011) (Massaro and Bosseler, 2003).…”

“…Foram encontrados poucos trabalhos que tratam oâmbito da comunicação de fato, a conversação entre crianças com autismo com outras crianças, terapeutas ou pais, seja diretamente ou por meio de uma interface (uma vez que muitas das crianças com autismo são não verbais). Dentre os trabalhos que abordam este assunto, pode-se mencionar (Bauminger et al, 2007) e (Kravits et al, 2002). Porém, ambos os trabalhos foram realizados com poucas crianças (três e uma, respectivamente), o que pode ser um indício de que novas pesquisas devem ser realizadas para validar o uso de computadores no auxílio do desenvolvimento da comunicação por crianças com autismo.…”