Virtual Reality based Avatar-mediated Joint Attention Task for Children with Autism: Implication on Performance and Physiology

Look Into my “Virtual” Eyes: What Dynamic Virtual Agents add to the Realistic Study of Joint Attention

“…Going beyond eye gaze, VAs also enable the consistent use of age-matched stimuli, especially when investigating child development or aging, where it may be difficult to use agematched confederates. Age matching as well as controlled age mismatching can be vital in understanding changes in joint attention and other aspects of social cognition across the lifespan (e.g., Slessor et al, 2010), as well as when investigating differences in children with learning difficulties related to ADHD and autism diagnosis (e.g., Bradley and Newbutt, 2018;Jyoti et al, 2019). VAs also facilitate investigations of cueing with a controlled variety of different "people" as well as more general effects of multiagent joint attention (Capozzi et al, 2015;Capozzi et al, 2018).…”