Technology-Facilitated Diagnosis and Treatment of Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder: An Engineering Perspective

Abstract

Abstract:The rapid development of computer and robotic technologies in the last decade is giving hope to perform earlier and more accurate diagnoses of the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and more effective, consistent, and cost-conscious treatment. Besides the reduced cost, the main benefit of using technology to facilitate treatment is that stimuli produced during each session of the treatment can be controlled, which not only guarantees consistency across different sessions, but also makes it possible to focus on a single phenomenon, which is difficult even for a trained professional to perform, and deliver the stimuli according to the treatment plan. In this article, we provide a comprehensive review of research on recent technology-facilitated diagnosis and treat of children and adults with ASD. Different from existing reviews on this topic, which predominantly concern clinical issues, we focus on the engineering perspective of autism studies. All technology facilitated systems used for autism studies can be modeled as human machine interactive systems where one or more participants would constitute as the human component, and a computer-based or a robotic-based system would be the machine component. Based on this model, we organize our review with the following questions: (1) What are presented to the participants in the studies and how are the content and delivery methods enabled by technologies? (2) How are the reactions/inputs collected from the participants in response to the stimuli in the studies? (3) Are the experimental procedure and programs presented to participants dynamically adjustable based on the responses from the participants, and if so, how? and (4) How are the programs assessed?

Effectiveness of Virtual Reality for Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder: An Evidence-Based Systematic Review

“…The search terms were: (autism OR ASD OR Asperger) AND (Virtual OR VR OR Mixed OR Augmented). Furthermore, the articles in the lists of reviews described in the introduction section [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 ] were searched manually.…”

“…However, this review is specially focused on other disorders (i.e., post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and phobias, chronic pain, rehabilitation, and addictions), and they do not review most of the recent studies concerning ASD and VR. In 2017, Liu et al [ 15 ] published a comprehensive review of technology-facilitated diagnosis and treatment of ASD. This study is different to our study in many aspects, but the main difference is that they focus their review on the engineering perspective of autism studies.…”

Leveraging Robotics Research for Children with Autism: A Review

“…Besides that, Broadbent (2017) deliberated on the appli-cation of social robots in human-robot interactions from the perspective of psychologists [32]. This is deemed to be essential in the development of robot technology and the study of human behavior [33]. Broadbent (2017) emphasized on how human think, feel and behave towards robots.…”

Design for an Art Therapy Robot: An Explorative Review of the Theoretical Foundations for Engaging in Emotional and Creative Painting with a Robot

“…Another interesting proposal has been made that robots could conduct "alloparenting", acting as surrogate guardians for human children, which we believe also relates to therapy, as parents are also required to support the emotional and mental well-being of children; this work highlights the importance of joint attention and empathy, as well as the promotion of autonomy through principles of beneficence, non-maleficence, equal provision of resources, and respect for a person's dignity [55]. In summary, therapy robotics appears to be an active area of research in which various work is being done, with both children and elderly, and also persons with physical disabilities, dementia, and autism [56,57].…”