A Virtual Reality System for Practicing Conversation Skills for Children with Autism

Rosenfield, Natalia Stewart; Lamkin, Kathleen; Re, Jennifer; Day, Kendra; Boyd, LouAnne; Linstead, Erik

doi:10.3390/mti3020028

Cited by 47 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…This use of immediate feedback on performance can ensure the tight fitting of the difficulty setting to the subjects capability [50]. This personalization of VR has proven to be of value in a wide variety of populations such as the blind [39], wheelchair users [37], children [51], stroke patients [52], and is of special relevance for the elderly population [53]. Indeed in elderly, more so than in most other groups, large differences in cognitive and physical fitness exist, underscoring the need for personalization [54].…”

Section: Vr Featuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Potential of Immersive Virtual Reality for Cognitive Training in Elderly

Bauer¹,

Andringa²

2020

Gerontology

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The number of elderly is growing rapidly, including those that struggle with cognitive decline and, consequently, activities of daily living. Developing interventions that slow down cognitive decline would greatly benefit the autonomy of these elderly, as well as their caretakers. Virtual reality (VR) is an immersive and interactive human-computer interface with real-time simulation that is suggested to be a promising tool to improve cognitive functioning. This literature review discusses the features of immersive VR, including its opportunities and limitations, that are of special relevance for improving cognition in elderly. First, the high flexibility of VR allows for personalized and safe training of potentially harmful situations and isolated aspects of tasks. Second, VR’s dynamic and real-time feedback on performance provides a labor-extensive tool for caretakers in elderly care. Third, the acquisition of high resolution data enables the exposure of subtle changes over time, relevant for detecting the nature and extent of cognitive changes in elderly, including those with dementia. Fourth, immersive VR has been related to cybersickness. Finally, VR is immersive and enables the perception and expression of emotions, motor behaviors, and multiple senses. Aged subjects are found to have sparing of emotional learning and show increased reliance on multisensory integration for learning. Moreover, they experience high levels of flow, motivation, and presence in VR setups. Despite the clear potential of immersive VR, the studies available are small scale and have not been replicated. The digital illiteracy of elderly and healthcare personnel form an additional barrier for implementation. Hence, while replication of outcomes and standardization of VR interventions is required before it can be used in standard care, VR may provide a particularly effective tool for training cognition in elderly.

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Section: Vr Featuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Potential of Immersive Virtual Reality for Cognitive Training in Elderly

Bauer¹,

Andringa²

2020

Gerontology

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“…Freeman et al used immersive VR environments to enhance psychological therapy interventions for adults with height phobias by simulating different scenarios of high altitude ( 48 ), while subjects with spider phobia were also introduced to a VR system that provided exposure therapy and educational material to help them cope with their fear ( 52 ). Systems offering social training for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) ( 51 ), and physical rehabilitation for post-stroke patients ( 42 ) have also been evaluated, showing positive outcomes of the feasibility and acceptability of the immersive VR technology in medical coaching applications. Augmented reality (AR) devices in the form of smart glasses were also tested with children suffering from ASD, as a means to assist them in directing their attention toward a human companion during conversation scenarios, and promote social activities ( 49 , 50 ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They were primarily used in systems targeting patients with mental and cognitive disorders, offering healthcare and motivational coaching, in order to help them overcome phobias, mental health care, and train in social activities ( 44 , 45 , 47 , 53 ). Speech recognition was commonly used to complement systems with immersive VR, in order to provide an enhanced user-system interaction experience ( 48 , 51 ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review of Virtual Coaching Systems in Healthcare: Closing the Loop With Real-Time Feedback

Tsiouris

Tsakanikas

Gatsios

et al. 2020

Front. Digit. Health

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This review focuses on virtual coaching systems that were designed to enhance healthcare interventions, combining the available sensing and system-user interaction technologies. In total, more than 1,200 research papers have been retrieved and evaluated for the purposes of this review, which were obtained from three online databases (i.e.,PubMed, Scopus and IEEE Xplore) using an extensive set of search keywords. After applying exclusion criteria, the remaining 41 research papers were used to evaluate the status of virtual coaching systems over the past 10 years and assess current and future trends in this field. The results suggest that in home coaching systems were mainly focused in promoting physical activity and a healthier lifestyle, while a wider range of medical domains was considered in systems that were evaluated in lab environment. In home patient monitoring with IoT devices and sensors was mostly limited to activity trackers, pedometers and heart rate monitoring. Real-time evaluations and personalized patient feedback was also found to be rather lacking in home coaching systems and this is the most alarming find of this analysis. Feasibility studies in controlled environment and an ongoing active research on Horizon 2020 funded projects, show that the future trends in this field are aiming to close the loop with automated patient monitoring, real-time evaluations and more precise interventions.

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“…Moreover, virtual reality (VR) has been explored and proved to be an effective rehabilitation method in many physical disabilities' rehabilitations [12], [13] and in other communication disorders such as autism [14], [15] and stuttering [16]. Although this potential has not yet been fully directed to aphasia disorder, there has been some work that investigated the effectiveness of VR in aphasia rehabilitation [17], [18] and proved it to be effective as patients were more attracted and concentrated.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interactive Virtual Rehabilitation for Aphasic Arabic-Speaking Patients

El-Gohary¹,

Lithy²,

Khamis³

et al. 2020

Adv. sci. technol. eng. syst. j.

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Objective: Individuals with aphasia often experience significant problems in their daily lives and social participation. Technologies that address speech and language disorders deficit in merging between therapist's major role and reinforcing the training between sessions at home. It also lacks the Arabic language attention; however, current systems are typically expensive and lack amusement. Moreover, cumulative feedback for both patient and therapist incapacitates the whole home rehabilitation process. This project sought to address these issues by developing an interactive rehabilitation-based system for people with aphasia. Methods: A virtual reality (VR) environment is created providing real-life situations with task specific training of comprehension in addition to a virtual speechlanguage pathologist (SLP) representing lip motions for correct pronunciation of target words. A speech recognition convolutional neural networks (CNN) algorithm based on signal processing is created and trained on ten isolated Arabic words. We tempted logspectrograms and Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) as feature extractors for the CNN model which is then integrated for accurate evaluation of input speech from the aphasic patient providing a real-time feedback resulting in measuring speech improvement and sends it to the SLP through the network via a website platform. Results: Our speech recognition assessment algorithm results in a recognition accuracy of 95.2 % using Log-Spectrograms feature extraction method and 92.6 % using MFCC. Significance & Conclusion: We hypothesize that this interactive VR therapy combined with speech function training will result in faster word retrieval and improve language ability of patients with aphasia and that our outcomes contribute to the development of a home-based language and speech therapy.

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A Virtual Reality System for Practicing Conversation Skills for Children with Autism

Cited by 47 publications

References 26 publications

The Potential of Immersive Virtual Reality for Cognitive Training in Elderly

The Potential of Immersive Virtual Reality for Cognitive Training in Elderly

A Review of Virtual Coaching Systems in Healthcare: Closing the Loop With Real-Time Feedback

Interactive Virtual Rehabilitation for Aphasic Arabic-Speaking Patients

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