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

PI：Sarkar N. 和 Warren, Z。提案编号：0967170 这个跨学科项目提出了根本性的、变革性的技术改进，以帮助患有自闭症谱系障碍 (ASD) 的儿童。目标是开发一种新颖的情感和注意力敏感的基于虚拟现实的自闭症谱系障碍干预辅助技术。社交沟通和社交信息处理被认为是自闭症儿童障碍的核心领域。拟议的研究将开发能够通过灵活、适应性地响应自闭症患者在社会范式中微妙的情感和注意力变化来针对个体缺陷的技术，并创建基于 VR 的自闭症干预技术，该技术可以将自己呈现为一个现实而强大的干预平台。 自闭症谱系障碍对个人、家庭和社会的影响是巨大的。因此，自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）研究的一个重要方向是识别和开发技术，使有效强化治疗的应用更加容易且具有成本效益。为了满足这一需求，该项目将基于 VR 的技术与情感计算相结合，使用生理信号和通过视线测量进行注意力推断，开发一种新的自闭症干预范例，这将显着改变理解自闭症儿童的特定脆弱性并为其量身定制干预措施的能力。该项目将开发一种辅助技术，该技术将产生一个情感和注意力敏感系统，用于在 VR 互动过程中检测、自适应响应和优化自闭症儿童的社交互动水平。该系统具有可扩展性，可适应广泛的干预策略，在设计和实施方面提供了灵活性。 智力优点：所提出的研究推进了自适应虚拟环境的设计和创作，以供有挑战性的儿童群体使用。它有潜力为情感计算，特别是由生理信号处理介导的情感计算，做出重大贡献。首先，该项目将开发新的框架来设计社交互动的虚拟环境，将情感和注意力信息智能地结合到自适应和可控的响应系统中。拟议的活动还代表了一项新技术，将从根本上推进人机交互的工程知识，以及对自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）假定的核心社会障碍和相关干预措施背后的机制的理解。更广泛的影响：新兴研究表明，多达每 150 名儿童中就有 1 人被诊断患有自闭症谱系障碍，而自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）相关护理每年花费国家超过 350 亿美元。该提案中开发的低成本和高度可部署的技术可能会对这一人群产生重大影响。他们还可能为自闭症儿童创造一种全新的技术干预方法。这项研究可能会进一步发展一种技术，该技术可以以典型干预计划成本的一小部分实现有效干预的所有核心组成部分，同时提高干预提供者系统地控制和促进针对个人缺陷的干预相关技能的能力。教育活动将培训和指导本科生和研究生进行拟议的研究，并开发针对工程新生的一学分研讨会课程的一个模块。外展活动将包括为高中生提供研究机会，特别是目前在 STEM（科学、技术、工程和数学）领域代表性不足的群体，并在夏季为高中教师提供自闭症干预先进技术的设计和研究评估的研究经验。外展目标还将涉及可用性测试，以征求行为专业人士和自闭症谱系障碍儿童的反馈。该项目提供了一个利用独特合作的机会，将尖端的工程、心理学和临床知识引入到开发实用且有效的辅助干预技术中，以解决 ASD 的核心症状。

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.