Emotional Self-Regulation of Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders: Smartwatches for Monitoring and Interaction

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the needs of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) to have a pervasive, feasible and non-stigmatizing form of assistance in their emotional self-regulation, in order to ease certain behavioral issues that undermine their mental health throughout their life. We argue the potential of recent widespread wearables, and more specifically smartwatches, to achieve this goal. Then, a smartwatch system that implements a wide range of self-regulation strategies and infers outburst patterns from physiological signals and movement is presented, along with an authoring tool for smartphones that is to be used by caregivers or family members to create and edit these strategies, in an adaptive way. We conducted an intensive experiment with two individuals with ASD who showed varied, representative behavioral responses to their emotional dysregulation. Both users were able to employ effective, customized emotional self-regulation strategies by means of the system, recovering from the majority of mild stress episodes and temper tantrums experienced in the nine days of experiment in their classroom.

Empowering Children with ASD and Their Parents: Design of a Serious Game for Anxiety and Stress Reduction

“…However, incorporating non-intrusive wearables, such as a smartwatch, could be an added value for both applications, as it could provide a more objective and accurate analysis of the anxiety and stress of the child. Taj-Eldin et al [77] and Torrado et al [78] give an overview of existing wearables and feasibility for physiological and emotional monitoring for people with ASD. Incorporating the physiological data in the SpaceControl app could provide the parents and therapists with a more understandable and objective overview of the child's anxiety and stress in relation to the game data.…”

Assisted Behavior Control with Wearable Devices: A Case Study for High-Functioning Autism

“…In the original experiment [22], 2 subjects (N = 2), namely subject A and subject B wore the smartwatch with Taimun Watch during 9 days in the center "Alenta" in Madrid, Spain. Both subjects belonged to the lower-functioning area of the spectrum, that is to say, their communicative abilities were severely impaired or non-existent, and they suffered numerous outbursts and meltdowns during the day due to several stimuli.…”

“…Following this idea, this paper presents a user experience of a smartwatch-based system that had been already tested with individuals in the low functioning area of the autism spectrum [22,23]. The purpose of this study is to check whether it is feasible for HFA individuals as well and analyze the kind of differences we may expect when it comes to apply wearable assistance to these individuals' issues in terms of interaction with the devices, content presentation and performance.…”

“…In the previous experiment [22], the system had been evaluated with 2 subjects who belonged to the low-functioning area of the spectrum, and its conclusions only applied to that subgroup. However, since its design intended to cover most of the spectrum in terms of possibilities and customization, evaluating its effect with subjects outside the low-functioning autism area also became necessary.…”

Wearable Long-Term Social Sensing for Mental Wellbeing

“…Notwithstanding the above, wearable sensing enables diagnostic capabilities which include physiological and biochemical sensing, smartphone sensing, as well as motion sensing [14][15][16]. The application areas are numerous and mainly include Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) [17], Care for the Elderly, Behavioral therapy [18], stress and mental health monitoring etc. Monitoring of ASD has been conducted by applying activity tracking, stress notification/monitoring, geo-fencing (creating safe-zones), emergency response, discrete vibration alert and the capacity to add unlimited contacts [19].…”