An Intelligent Three Dimensional Learning Environment for Enhancing Social Communication Skills in Infants and Toddlers

项目摘要 自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）是一种常见且昂贵的神经发育障碍， 与社会沟通有关的缺陷。越来越多的经验表明，早期干预 可以显著改善特定的早期社会沟通技能（即，共同关注和社会导向）， 这些改善部分地促进了其他关键发展领域的改善， 社会和语言成果。不幸的是，许多家庭很难获得适当的，有效的 由于资源有限，在年轻时提供早期干预服务，包括：获得服务的机会有限， 与识别/治疗有关的延迟和等待，专家提供者数量有限，以及障碍 与治疗费用有关。迫切需要开发新的工具和范例， 可以帮助在资源紧张的系统中促进获得强有力的干预措施。一个潜在的新 一个范例是试图利用复杂的技术平台来解决ASD问题 性问题当前研究的主要目标是改进、增强和测试创新、 专门设计用于解决早期社会交流的智能技术架构和系统 自闭症儿童的脆弱性。我们明确表示，不建议将这项技术作为独立的干预措施 也不能替代现有的必要干预和晚年护理。相反，我们建议它作为一个 对一种新的技术工具和范式进行批判性测试，以思考先进的早期检测和行动 关于早期社会沟通问题和自闭症。我们将测试我们创新的三个- 多维智能学习环境，以检测和有意义地回应核心社会沟通 在照顾者互动过程中表现出的行为。简单地说，环境将被设计成帮助年轻人 孩子们更经常对他们的名字做出反应，跟随目光和常见的手势，并协调社会注意力 与他们的照顾者互动。未来严格的研究和了解这一系统的能力， 这些早期关键的社会沟通技能可能为完全不同的未来奠定基础。 干预方法。在目前的工作中，我们将首先完善和增强我们现有的智能 技术架构，目前能够实时检测和推断社会关注度， 基于该检测提供提示，以创建一个强大而强大的混合技术和社会 学习平台。然后，我们将评估这项技术流畅和自主运行的能力， 临床样本这项研究的预期收益可能是巨大的。它将首次允许 用于系统评估创新的，技术介导的ASD干预平台， 在发展的关键点上，可以很容易地转化为有意义的现实世界使用的幼儿。

Project Summary Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a common and costly neurodevelopmental disorder with core deficits related to social communication. There is growing empirical support suggesting that early intervention can significantly improve specific early social communication skills (i.e., joint attention and social orienting) and that such improvements partially mediate improvements in other critical developmental areas, including broad social and language outcomes. Unfortunately, many families struggle greatly to access appropriate, effective early intervention services at young ages due to resource limitations, including: limited access to services, delays and waits related to identification/treatment, a limited number of expert providers, as well as barriers related to the cost of treatment. There is an urgent need for the development of new tools and paradigms that can help advance access to powerful interventions across resource-strained systems. One potential new paradigm involves attempting to harness the abilities of sophisticated technological platforms to address ASD concerns. The primary goal of the current research is to refine, augment, and test the ability of an innovative, intelligent technological architecture and system specifically designed to address early social communication vulnerabilities in children with ASD. We explicitly do not propose this technology as a stand-alone intervention nor as a replacement for existing necessary intervention and care at later ages. Rather, we propose it as a critical test of a new technological tool and paradigm for thinking about advanced early detection and action regarding early social communication concerns and ASD. We will test the ability of our innovative three- dimensional intelligent learning environment to detect and meaningfully respond to core social communication behaviors evidenced during caregiver interactions. Simply, the environment will be designed to help young children more often respond to their names, follow gaze and common gestures, and coordinate social attention in interactions with their caregivers. Future rigorous study and understanding of this system’s ability to bolster these early pivotal social communication skills could lay the groundwork for radically different future intervention approaches. In the current work, we will first refine and augment our existing intelligent technological architecture, currently capable of detecting and inferring social attention in real-time as well as providing prompts based on this detection, to create a robust and powerful blended technological and social learning platform. We will then evaluate the ability of this technology to operate fluidly and autonomously with a clinical sample. The expected benefit of this research could be tremendous. It would, for the first time, allow for the systematic evaluation of an innovative, technologically-mediated ASD intervention platform for very young children that could readily translate into meaningful real-world use at a critical point in development.