Design of a Virtual Reality Based Adaptive Response Technology for Children With Autism

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate potent impairments in social communication skills including atypical viewing patterns during social interactions. Recently, several assistive technologies, particularly virtual reality (VR), have been investigated to address specific social de...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on neural systems and rehabilitation engineering 2013-01, Vol.21 (1), p.55-64
Main Authors: Lahiri, Uttama, Bekele, Esubalew, Dohrmann, Elizabeth, Warren, Zachary, Sarkar, Nilanjan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Autism
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
Autistic Disorder - physiopathology
Autistic Disorder - rehabilitation
Avatars
Bidirectional control
Biofeedback, Psychology - instrumentation
Biofeedback, Psychology - methods
blink rate (BR)
Children
Communication systems
Design engineering
Equipment Design
Eye Movements
eye-tracking
Female
fixation duration (FD)
Fixation, Ocular
Humans
Imaging, Three-Dimensional - instrumentation
Imaging, Three-Dimensional - methods
Interpersonal Relations
Male
Measurement
Physiology
pupil diameter (PD)
Real-time systems
Skills
Switches
Tasks
Therapy, Computer-Assisted - instrumentation
Therapy, Computer-Assisted - methods
Treatment Outcome
User-Computer Interface
Variable speed drives
Viewing
Virtual reality
virtual reality (VR)
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Summary:Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate potent impairments in social communication skills including atypical viewing patterns during social interactions. Recently, several assistive technologies, particularly virtual reality (VR), have been investigated to address specific social deficits in this population. Some studies have coupled eye-gaze monitoring mechanisms to design intervention strategies. However, presently available systems are designed to primarily chain learning via aspects of one's performance only which affords restricted range of individualization. The presented work seeks to bridge this gap by developing a novel VR-based interactive system with Gaze-sensitive adaptive response technology that can seamlessly integrate VR-based tasks with eye-tracking techniques to intelligently facilitate engagement in tasks relevant to advancing social communication skills. Specifically, such a system is capable of objectively identifying and quantifying one's engagement level by measuring real-time viewing patterns, subtle changes in eye physiological responses, as well as performance metrics in order to adaptively respond in an individualized manner to foster improved social communication skills among the participants. The developed system was tested through a usability study with eight adolescents with ASD. The results indicate the potential of the system to promote improved social task performance along with socially-appropriate mechanisms during VR-based social conversation tasks.
ISSN:1534-4320
1558-0210
DOI:10.1109/TNSRE.2012.2218618