Uttama Lahiri and Medha Sarkar
ASD, virtual-reality, pupil diameter, blink rate, engagement
Deficits in social communication related skills are thought to be associated with children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Several assistive technologies, particularly Virtual Reality (VR) based human-computer interaction, have been investigated to promote social interactions in this population in recent years. Deficit in social communication skills has been partially attributed to the atypical viewing patterns demonstrated by these children during social interactions. Thus monitoring eye-gaze can be valuable to design intervention strategies. However, presently available VR-based systems are designed to chain learning via aspects of one’s performance only permitting limited degree of individualization. Given the spectrum nature of autism, high degree of individualization is critical. Thus with the promise of VR-based social interaction and the usefulness of monitoring eye-gaze in real-time, a novel VR-based Gaze-sensitive system is developed in this work. The uniqueness of the developed system lies in its intelligent adaptive capability thereby offering a high degree of individualization. The developed system was tested through a small usability study with three adolescents with ASD. The results indicate the potential of such human-computer system to promote improved social task performance along with socially-appropriate mechanisms during VR-based social conversation tasks.
Important Links:
Go Back
