A Novel Adaptive Transactional Virtual Reality-based Assistive Technology for Autism Intervention

一种用于自闭症干预的新型自适应交易虚拟现实辅助技术

• 批准号: 0967170
• 负责人: Nilanjan Sarkar
• 金额: $ 30万
• 依托单位: Vanderbilt University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-08-01 至 2014-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0967170&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Novel; Adaptive; Transactional; Virtual; Reality

PI: Sarkar N. & Warren, Z.Proposal Number: 0967170 This interdisciplinary project proposes fundamental, transformative technology improvements to assist children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The objective is to develop a novel affect and attention sensitive virtual reality -based assistive technology for ASD intervention. Social communication and social information processing are thought to represent core domains of impairment in children with ASD. The proposed research will develop technologies capable of targeting individual deficit by flexibly and adaptively responding to subtle affective and attentive changes in individuals with ASD during social paradigms and create VR-based ASD intervention technology that can present itself as a realistic and powerful intervention platform. The individual, familial, and societal impact associated with ASD is enormous. Therefore, an important direction for research on ASD is the identification and development of technology that can make application of effective intensive treatment more accessible and cost effective. To address this need, this project will combine VR-based technology with affective computing using physiological signals and attention inference through eye gaze measurement to develop a new paradigm for autism intervention that will appreciably transform the ability to understand and tailor interventions to the specific vulnerabilities of children with ASD. The project will develop an assistive technology that will result in an affect and attention sensitive system for detecting, adaptively responding to, and optimizing levels of social interaction for children with ASD during VR interactions. The system is scalable and adaptable to a broad range of intervention strategies, providing flexibility in design and implementation.Intellectual Merit: The proposed research advances the design and authoring of adaptive virtual environments for use with a challenged population of children. It has the potential to significantly contribute new computational methods for affective computing, particularly affective computing mediated by physiologic signal processing. Primarily, the project will develop new framework to design virtual environments for social interaction that intelligently combine both affective and attentive information into adaptive and controllable response systems. The proposed activity also represents a new technology that will fundamentally advance the engineering knowledge of human-computer interactions as well as the understanding of the mechanisms that underlie the presumed core social impairments, and associated interventions, with ASD.Broader Impacts: Emerging research suggests as many as 1 in 150 children are diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder and ASD related care costs the nation over $35 billion annually. The low-cost and highly deployable technologies developed in this proposal could have significant impact on this population. They may also create a completely new technological intervention methodology for children with ASD. This research may further a technology that can enable all core components of effective intervention at only a fraction of the cost of typical intervention programs, while at the same time increasing the ability of the intervention provider to systematically control and promote intervention related skills targeting individual deficit. The educational activities will train and mentor undergraduate and graduate students in the proposed research, and develop one module in a one-credit seminar course targeted to engineering freshman class. The outreach activities will include offering research opportunities to high school students, especially among groups currently underrepresented in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields, and providing high school teachers with research experience during summer in the design and research evaluation of advanced technologies for autism intervention. Outreach objectives will also involve usability testing to elicit feedback from behavioral professionals and children with ASD. This project represents an opportunity to leverage a unique collaboration that brings cutting-edge engineering, psychology, and clinical knowledge to the development of a pragmatic and efficacious assistive intervention technology addressing core symptoms of ASD.

PI：Sarkar N.＆Warren，Z.Proposal编号：0967170该跨学科项目提出了基本的，变革性的技术改进，以帮助自闭症谱系障碍儿童（ASD）。目的是为ASD干预开发一种新颖的影响和注意力敏感的虚拟现实辅助技术。人们认为社会沟通和社会信息处理代表了ASD儿童中损害的核心领域。拟议的研究将开发能够针对个人赤字的技术，通过灵活地和适应性地响应社会范式中ASD的个体的微妙情感和专注的变化，并创建基于VR的ASD干预技术，该技术可以作为现实且强大的干预平台表现出来。 与ASD相关的个人，家族和社会影响是巨大的。因此，研究ASD的重要方向是技术的识别和开发，可以使有效的强化治疗的应用更加易于使用和成本效益。为了满足这一需求，该项目将使用生理信号和通过眼睛凝视测量来将基于VR的技术与情感计算相结合，以开发自闭症干预的新范式，从而明显地改变了对ASD儿童特定脆弱性的理解和量身定制干预措施的能力。该项目将开发一种辅助技术，该技术将导致感动和注意力敏感系统，以检测，适应性响应并优化VR互动过程中ASD儿童的社交互动水平。该系统是可扩展的，并且可以适应各种干预策略，从而提供了设计和实施方面的灵活性。智能优点：拟议的研究推动了适应性虚拟环境的设计和创作，用于与受到挑战的儿童人群一起使用。它有可能为情感计算，特别是由生理信号处理介导的情感计算的新计算方法。首先，该项目将开发新的框架，以设计虚拟环境的社交互动，这些环境将情感和专心信息巧妙地结合到自适应和可控响应系统中。拟议的活动还代表了一项新技术，它将从根本上推进人类计算机相互作用的工程知识，以及对基于假定的核心社会障碍和相关干预措施的机制的理解，并具有ASD。该提案中开发的低成本和高度可部署技术可能会对该人群产生重大影响。它们还可能为ASD儿童创建一种全新的技术干预方法。这项研究可能会进一步一项技术，该技术只能以典型干预计划的一小部分有效干预的所有核心组成部分，同时增加干预提供商系统地控制和促进针对个人赤字的干预相关技能的能力。教育活动将在拟议的研究中培训和导师的本科生和研究生，并在针对工程新生课程的单学研讨会课程中开发一个模块。外展活动将包括向高中生提供研究机会，尤其是在目前在STEM（科学，技术，工程和数学）领域的人数不足的团体中，并为夏季在夏季进行自闭症干预的高级技术的设计和研究评估期间为高中教师提供研究经验。外展目标还将涉及可用性测试，以引起行为专业人员和ASD儿童的反馈。该项目代表了利用独特的合作的机会，该合作将尖端的工程，心理学和临床知识带入务实有效的辅助干预技术，以解决ASD的核心症状。