Periodic Reporting for period 1 - VEST (Virtual Environments for Social Training)
Período documentado: 2015-04-01 hasta 2016-09-30
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a clinical diagnostic label used to characterize a wide array of individuals who are heterogeneous both in their clinical phenotype but also in the likely underlying etiology and pathophysiology of their condition. However, despite this hetereogeneity, all individuals with autism exhibit some common degree of core difficulty in the domain of social-communication. These difficulties have a wide array of behavioural and cognitive manifestations, which include a limited understanding of social norms and expectations, overly literal interpretations of speech, and the inability to carry out or sustain reciprocal conversation. These impairments often lead to social exclusion and failure to develop age-appropriate peer relationships. Some individuals with ASD also show tendencies for social avoidance and/or social anxiety and find group interaction difficult.
Although several behavioural interventions are used for individual on the ASD, they typically exhibit important limitations. For example, although some interventions have been effective in teaching a new social skill or behaviour, these skills and behaviours typically fail to transfer to novel situations, presumably because they are typically decontextualized from situations of everyday life. Project VEST aimed at developing an immersive Virtual Reality application that would allow individuals on the ASD to apply in realistic settings social skills taught by the therapist. Our approach aimed at training individuals with ASD on tasks that are useful and typical of their everyday life, allowing them to extend their behavioural repertoire and build skills that can facilitate their participation in society.
By the end of the project we have created a Virtual Reality application and tested its usability with both healthy adults and individuals on the ASD, their caregivers, and their therapists. The application runs on commercial immersive VR Head-Mounted-Displays and contains at the moment 2 scenarios, an indoor party scene and an outdoor gathering. In each scene, the user is required to carry out a conversation with virtual characters, whose behaviour and language is controlled by the therapist through the use of a mobile device. Thus, by steering the conversation in an on-line manner, the therapist is able to create situations in which the individual on the ASD is required to respond in a socially appropriate manner by applying the set of skills that were previously taught in therapy. An alternative gamified option in the application allows the therapist to provide the user with choices of responses and provide points as a reward for selecting the most appropriate response for the current context.
Beyond the current project, we aim at designing a study -- in collaboration with scientists with expertise in autism research -- to assess the effectiveness of the developed application for promoting the conversational skills of individuals on ASD. In addition, the prototype application will be further developed and exploited by a spin-out company we have formed (www.silversky3d.com) following the conclusion of an earlier ERC Proof of Concept project.
Although several behavioural interventions are used for individual on the ASD, they typically exhibit important limitations. For example, although some interventions have been effective in teaching a new social skill or behaviour, these skills and behaviours typically fail to transfer to novel situations, presumably because they are typically decontextualized from situations of everyday life. Project VEST aimed at developing an immersive Virtual Reality application that would allow individuals on the ASD to apply in realistic settings social skills taught by the therapist. Our approach aimed at training individuals with ASD on tasks that are useful and typical of their everyday life, allowing them to extend their behavioural repertoire and build skills that can facilitate their participation in society.
By the end of the project we have created a Virtual Reality application and tested its usability with both healthy adults and individuals on the ASD, their caregivers, and their therapists. The application runs on commercial immersive VR Head-Mounted-Displays and contains at the moment 2 scenarios, an indoor party scene and an outdoor gathering. In each scene, the user is required to carry out a conversation with virtual characters, whose behaviour and language is controlled by the therapist through the use of a mobile device. Thus, by steering the conversation in an on-line manner, the therapist is able to create situations in which the individual on the ASD is required to respond in a socially appropriate manner by applying the set of skills that were previously taught in therapy. An alternative gamified option in the application allows the therapist to provide the user with choices of responses and provide points as a reward for selecting the most appropriate response for the current context.
Beyond the current project, we aim at designing a study -- in collaboration with scientists with expertise in autism research -- to assess the effectiveness of the developed application for promoting the conversational skills of individuals on ASD. In addition, the prototype application will be further developed and exploited by a spin-out company we have formed (www.silversky3d.com) following the conclusion of an earlier ERC Proof of Concept project.