Design of an Assistive Avatar in Improving Eye Gaze Perception in Children with ASD During Virtual Interaction

Amat, Ashwaq Zaini; Swanson, Amy; Weitlauf, Amy; Warren, Zachary; Sarkar, Nilanjan

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-92049-8_33

Cited by 5 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…The current work substantially expands our previous conference paper [21] in terms of i) system augmentation, ii) introduction of an individualized adaptation model and iii) data from a pilot study. System augmentation included adding a new dimension to the avatar's gaze prompts by manipulating the depth of the eye movements together with varying speed of the avatar's gaze prompts and the inclusion of new region of interests on the avatar's face to observe participants' gaze fixation in a detailed manner.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 84%

Design of an Interactive Virtual Reality System, InViRS, for Joint Attention Practice in Autistic Children

Amat

Zhao

Swanson

et al. 2021

IEEE Trans. Neural Syst. Rehabil. Eng.

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Many children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) exhibit atypical gaze behaviors related to joint attention, a fundamental social-communication skill. Specifically, children with ASD show differences in the skills of gaze sharing and gaze following. In this work we present a novel virtual reality (VR)-based system, called InViRS, in which children with ASD play games allowing them to practice gaze sharing and gaze following. InViRS has three main design contributions: (i) a closed-loop joint attention paradigm with real-time tracking of the participant’s eye gaze and game performance measures, (ii) an assistive feedback mechanism that provides guidance and hints in real time, and (iii) a controller that adaptively changes the avatar’s gaze prompts according to the performance measures. Results from a pilot study to evaluate the feasibility of InViRS with 9 autistic 1 children and 9 typically developing (TD) children offered preliminary support for the feasibility of successful gameplay as well as positive impacts on the targeted skills of gaze sharing and gaze following.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 84%

Design of an Interactive Virtual Reality System, InViRS, for Joint Attention Practice in Autistic Children

Amat

Zhao

Swanson

et al. 2021

IEEE Trans. Neural Syst. Rehabil. Eng.

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“…21 papers also reported using some form of intelligence (IQ scores e.g., full-scale IQ, verbal IQ, performance IQ). It is also worth noting that all five papers presenting preliminary designs and studies without ASD participants did not indicate diagnostic traits for their target audience [40], [46], [47], [49], [52].…”

Section: Rq3: What Methods Were Used To Screen Participants During the Selection Process?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The types of attention-based tasks implemented in each paper were dependent on aims of the study. These included improving attention or training a skill (e.g., pronunciation, emotion recognition) or assessing attention differences Social (30) [41], [44], [68]- [71], [73]- [78], [47], [79], [81], [85], [86], [88], [92], [93], [95], [97], [98], [48], [99], [49], [52], [61], [62], [64], [65] Selective (15) [8], [40], [91], [94], [100]- [102], [43], [46], [49], [50], [67], [82], [88], [90] Sustained (16) [39], [40], [89], [91], [96], [100], [101], [103],…”

Section: H Rq7: What Types Of Attention Tasks Were Used During the Primary Studies?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While most studies involved interaction with either a virtual agent or object, these interactions often occurred with a second gaze-based task, in which participants fixated eye-contact onto stimuli [69], [70], followed cues to interact with objects [8], [76], [91] or to maintain gaze [46], or interacted with an avatar to identify emotions [71]. Two studies involving four tasks (e.g., interact and maintain gaze with an avatar to follow cues to interact with objects) [47], [49] focused on social, selective, and sustained attention.…”

Section: Table 8 Types Of Physiological and Behavioral Signals Measured In Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Attention-Based Applications in Extended Reality to Support Autistic Users: A Systematic Review

2022

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“…The research shows that after virtual-environment training, patients with ASD exhibit obvious improvement in street-crossing and street-navigation abilities [ 12 ]. Amat designed a training game based on virtual reality, which mainly solved the joint-attention impairment of children with ASD [ 13 ]. Mei proposed an attention-training method for children with ASD using virtual-reality games to improve their attention.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Physical Exercise and Virtual Training on Visual Attention Levels in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Yang

2021

Brain Sciences

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This study compared the effects of physical exercise (PE) and virtual training (VT) on the improvement of the visual attention mechanism in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). One hundred eighty-nine children with ASD were recruited from Orphan School in Liaoning Province, China. After screening, 100 children ultimately participated in the experiment. Children with ASD were randomly assigned to VT (VT, n = 34), PE (PE, n = 33) and control group (CG, n = 33). The VT group experiment was performed in a virtual environment through the game FIFA21 three times per week for 6 weeks. The PE group played physical football matches three times per week for 6 weeks. Children with ASD in the CG group did not receive VT or PE but only received psychological counseling. Visual attention of children with ASD is evaluated by using the multiple object tracking paradigm (MOT). After 6 weeks of observation, although none of the three groups saw improvements in the correct rate of ring tracking, the observations of the VT and PE groups were significant (p < 0.05) compared to the CG group in finding detection rate of probe stimulus. Through MOT tests, VT and PE improved the detection rate of probe stimulus in children with ASD. Therefore, this paper indicates that VT and PE can improve the visual attention ability of children with ASD.

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Design of an Assistive Avatar in Improving Eye Gaze Perception in Children with ASD During Virtual Interaction

Cited by 5 publications

References 17 publications

Design of an Interactive Virtual Reality System, InViRS, for Joint Attention Practice in Autistic Children

Design of an Interactive Virtual Reality System, InViRS, for Joint Attention Practice in Autistic Children

Attention-Based Applications in Extended Reality to Support Autistic Users: A Systematic Review

Effects of Physical Exercise and Virtual Training on Visual Attention Levels in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

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