This study evaluated the effectiveness of a three-week intervention in which a co-located cooperation enforcing interface, called StoryTable, was used to facilitate collaboration and positive social interaction for six children, aged 8-10 years, with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Intervention focused on exposing pairs of children to an enforced collaboration paradigm while they narrated a story. Pre-and post intervention tasks included a "low technology" version of the story telling device and a non story-telling play situation using a free construction game. The outcome measure was a structured observation scale of social interaction. Results demonstrated progress in three areas of social behaviors. First, the participants were more likely to initiate positive social interaction with peers after the intervention. Second, the level of shared play of the children increased from the pre-test to the post test and they all increased the level of collaboration following the intervention. Third, the children with ASD demonstrated lower frequencies of autistic behaviors while using the StoryTable in comparison to the free construction game activity. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of the effectiveness of this intervention for higher functioning children with ASD.

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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

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In this work, we present a study on adaptation in a mobile museum guide, investigating the relationships between personality traits, and the attitudes towards some basic dimensions of adaptivity. Each participant was exposed to two simulated systems-one adaptive, the other not-on each of the dimensions investigated. The study showed that the personality traits relating to the notion of control (conscientiousness, neuroticism/emotional stability, Locus of Control) have a selective effect on the acceptance of the adaptivity dimensions.

An evaluation of the functionality and usability of KNAVE-II and its supporting knowledge-based temporal-mediation architecture has produced highly encouraging results regarding saving of physician time, enhancement of accuracy of clinical assessment, and user satisfaction.

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In this paper we present DaFEx (Database of Facial Expressions), a database created with the purpose of providing a benchmark for the evaluation of the facial expressivity of Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs). DaFEx consists of 1008 short videos containing emotional facial expressions of the 6 Ekman's emotions plus the neutral expression. The facial expressions were recorded by 8 professional actors (male and female) in two acting conditions ("utterance" and "no-utterance") and at 3 intensity levels (high, medium, low). The properties of DaFEx were studied by having 80 subjects classify the emotion expressed in the videos. High rates of accuracy were obtained for most of the emotions displayed. We also tested the effect of the intensity level, of the articulatory movements due to speech, and of the actors' and subjects' gender, on classification accuracy. The results showed that decoding accuracy decreases with the intensity of emotions; that the presence of articulatory movements negatively affects the recognition of fear, surprise and of the neutral expression, while it improves the recognition of anger; and that facial expressions seem to be recognized (slightly) better when acted by actresses than by actors.