Navigation and exploration of an urban virtual environment by children with autism spectrum disorder compared to children with typical development

Fornasari, Livia; Chittaro, Luca; Ieronutti, Lucio; Cottini, Lucio; Dassi, Sebastiano; Cremaschi, Silvana; Molteni, Massimo; Fabbro, Franco; Brambilla, Paolo

doi:10.1016/j.rasd.2013.04.007

Cited by 32 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Invasive techniques have not been used in the studies reviewed. They do not pose risks to users or intrude in any way [11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Technologies as Support Tools for Persons with Autistic Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review

Aresti-Bartolome

Garcia‐Zapirain

2014

IJERPH

185

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This study analyzes the technologies most widely used to work on areas affected by the Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Technologies can focus on the strengths and weaknesses of this disorder as they make it possible to create controlled environments, reducing the anxiety produced by real social situations. Extensive research has proven the efficiency of technologies as support tools for therapy and their acceptation by ASD sufferers and the people who are with them on a daily basis. This article is organized by the types of systems developed: virtual reality applications, telehealth systems, social robots and dedicated applications, all of which are classified by the areas they center on: communication, social learning and imitation skills and other ASD-associated conditions. 40.5% of the research conducted is found to be focused on communication as opposed to 37.8% focused on learning and social imitation skills and 21.6% which underlines problems associated with this disorder. Although most of the studies reveal how useful these tools are in therapy, they are generic tools for ASD sufferers in general, which means there is a lack of personalised tools to meet each person’s needs.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Technologies as Support Tools for Persons with Autistic Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review

Aresti-Bartolome

Garcia‐Zapirain

2014

IJERPH

185

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“…(3) Dedicated Applications: technological tools designed to work in computers, tablets or mobiles, such as communicators [28]. Applications of this type have been used to work on areas affected by autism [29,30] and conditions related to Autism Spectrum Disorder, mainly concentrating on creating applications that help people with autism to communicate through images and sounds [31][32][33]. These systems are widely accepted because they are simple to use and contain very intuitive tools, since they work with everyday items [34].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive rehabilitation system for children with autism spectrum disorder using serious games: A pilot study

Aresti-Bartolome

Garcia‐Zapirain

2015

BME

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Abstract. This paper studies and assesses how rehabilitation activities and supervised computer games incorporated into a system aimed at people diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can be used to work on the areas affected by ASD at any time and in any place. This research specifically assesses the areas that affect communication and interaction between people with ASD and professionals. In order to do this, a group of 20 children diagnosed with ASD of between 3 and 8 years old (clinical group) was used, together with a group of 20 children of between 3 and 8 years old with a neurotypical development, which served as a control group. During the tests, response time and visual interaction with the session leader were evaluated. Despite the fact that the clinical group spent more time (M= 21.08 sec) than the control group (M= 4.52) to interact leader, eye contact predominated in the interaction. As a result of the pilot study, the system obtained could help in cognitive rehabilitation.

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“…The hypothesis that ASD involves core impairments in scene construction/self-projection/mental simulation is yet to be fully empirically tested, but several existing research findings are consistent with it. Previous studies of spatial navigation in ASD have reported mixed results and have suffered from problems such as inadequate ASD/comparison group matching on performance IQ (Prior and Hoffman, 1990 ; Fornasari et al, 2013 ) or sex (Edgin and Pennington, 2005 ), or incomplete reporting of results (Caron et al, 2004 ), making interpretation of findings inconclusive (see Lind et al, 2013 , for a detailed evaluation). However, in a recent study, we found that intellectually high-functioning adults with ASD were moderately and significantly impaired in spatial navigation, relative to sex, age, and IQ matched neurotypical, comparison adults (Lind et al, 2013 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial navigation, episodic memory, episodic future thinking, and theory of mind in children with autism spectrum disorder: evidence for impairments in mental simulation?

2014

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This study explored spatial navigation alongside several other cognitive abilities that are thought to share common underlying neurocognitive mechanisms (e.g., the capacity for self-projection, scene construction, or mental simulation), and which we hypothesized may be impaired in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Twenty intellectually high-functioning children with ASD (with a mean age of ~8 years) were compared to 20 sex, age, IQ, and language ability matched typically developing children on a series of tasks to assess spatial navigation, episodic memory, episodic future thinking (also known as episodic foresight or prospection), theory of mind (ToM), relational memory, and central coherence. This is the first study to explore these abilities concurrently within the same sample. Spatial navigation was assessed using the “memory island” task, which involves finding objects within a realistic, computer simulated, three-dimensional environment. Episodic memory and episodic future thinking were assessed using a past and future event description task. ToM was assessed using the “animations” task, in which children were asked to describe the interactions between two animated triangles. Relational memory was assessed using a recognition task involving memory for items (line drawings), patterned backgrounds, or combinations of items and backgrounds. Central coherence was assessed by exploring differences in performance across segmented and unsegmented versions of block design. Children with ASD were found to show impairments in spatial navigation, episodic memory, episodic future thinking, and central coherence, but not ToM or relational memory. Among children with ASD, spatial navigation was found to be significantly negatively related to the number of repetitive behaviors. In other words, children who showed more repetitive behaviors showed poorer spatial navigation. The theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.

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Navigation and exploration of an urban virtual environment by children with autism spectrum disorder compared to children with typical development

Cited by 32 publications

References 37 publications

Technologies as Support Tools for Persons with Autistic Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review

Technologies as Support Tools for Persons with Autistic Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review

Cognitive rehabilitation system for children with autism spectrum disorder using serious games: A pilot study

Spatial navigation, episodic memory, episodic future thinking, and theory of mind in children with autism spectrum disorder: evidence for impairments in mental simulation?

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