Accessing Peer Social Interaction

Abstract

Autism spectrum and related communication and social disorders can severely affect some children's ability to engage in peer social interaction. In this article, we describe and evaluate an Authorable Virtual Peer (AVP), technology designed to help children access peer interactions by supporting them in developing critical social skills. Children interact with the AVP in three ways: (1) engaging in face-to-face interaction with a life-sized, computer-animated child; (2) creating new social behaviors for the AVP; and (3) controlling the AVP using a graphical user interface to select appropriate responses while the AVP interacts with another person. Our evaluation suggests that when an AVP is used as an activity during a social group intervention, a common intervention approach used with children with social and communication difficulties, that children's use of specific social behaviors critical to successful social interaction increases during role-play of common social situations with another child. Nanclares-Nogués. 2014. Accessing peer social interaction: Using authorable virtual peer technology as a component of a group social skills intervention program.

Bringing together multimodal and multilevel approaches to study the emergence of social bonds between children and improve social AI

“…This first instance of the experiment will focus on neurotypical individuals and questions addressing neurotype will therefore be included in the parent questionnaire. We envision subsequent iterations of the study to include neurodivergent individuals, in line with our prior work with that population (Tartaro et al, 2014).…”

Conception d'interactions virtuelles et tangibles pour apprendre la collaboration motrice à des enfants avec Trouble du Spectre de l'Autisme

“…C'est ce qui a été fait lors du projet de la «Wobbly table »(figure 3, gauche) ayant pour objectif d'augmenter l'effet de présence sociale par le partage entre l'utilisateur et l'agent d'une table mi tangible -mi virtuelle [39]. Ce type de paradigme de la fenêtre réelle -virtuelle a par la suite été utilisé lors d'une tâche d'imitation entre des adultes atteints de TSA et un agent virtuel [40] (figure 3, centre), ainsi que lors d'une tâche de jeu en miroir entre un enfant atteint de TSA et un agent virtuel [41] (figure 3, droite).…”