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

建议编号：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的儿童。其目的是开发一种新的基于情感和注意力敏感的虚拟现实辅助技术，用于ASD干预。社会交流和社会信息处理被认为是自闭症儿童损害的核心领域。这项拟议的研究将开发能够针对个体缺陷的技术，通过灵活和适应性地响应ASD患者在社会范式中的细微情感和注意力变化，并创造基于VR的ASD干预技术，将其本身呈现为一个现实和强大的干预平台。与ASD相关的个人、家庭和社会影响是巨大的。因此，ASD研究的一个重要方向是确定和开发能够使有效的强化治疗更容易获得和成本效益更高的技术。为了满足这一需求，该项目将把基于VR的技术与情感计算结合起来，通过眼睛凝视测量使用生理信号和注意力推理来开发一种新的自闭症干预范例，这将显著改变理解和定制干预措施的能力，以适应自闭症儿童的特定脆弱性。该项目将开发一种辅助技术，该技术将导致一个情感和注意力敏感系统，用于在VR互动期间检测、自适应响应和优化ASD儿童的社交互动水平。该系统可扩展和适应广泛的干预策略，在设计和实施方面提供了灵活性。智力优势：拟议的研究促进了自适应虚拟环境的设计和创作，以供残疾儿童使用。它有可能为情感计算，特别是生理信号处理中介的情感计算贡献新的计算方法。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反应系统中。这项拟议的活动还代表了一项新技术，它将从根本上促进人机交互的工程学知识，以及对推测的核心社会障碍和相关干预措施背后机制的理解。广泛影响：新兴研究表明，多达150名儿童中有1人被诊断出患有自闭症谱系障碍，与自闭症相关的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。他们还可能为患有自闭症的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，该技术能够以典型干预计划的一小部分成本实现有效干预的所有核心组成部分，同时增加干预提供者系统控制和促进针对个人缺陷的干预相关技能的能力。教育活动将在拟议的研究中培训和指导本科生和研究生，并在针对工程一年级学生的一学分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，特别是在STEM(科学、技术、工程和数学)领域目前代表性不足的群体中，并在夏季为高中教师提供设计和研究评估自闭症干预先进技术的研究经验。推广目标还包括可用性测试，以从行为专业人员和患有自闭症的儿童那里获得反馈。该项目代表着一个利用独特合作的机会，该合作将尖端的工程学、心理学和临床知识带到开发一种实用而有效的辅助干预技术，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.