Demonstration of a Collaborative Interface to Promote Positive Social Interaction Skills for Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

Background:   While various Computer Assisted Instruction tools have been studied, and resulted in mainly positive effects on children with ASD, responses from both professionals and parents have been mixed; along with the obvious advantage of using such environments with children with ASD, there are those who fear that such tools will increase social withdrawal and encourage compulsive behaviors. However, it has been demonstrated that computer based interventions and virtual environments offer a useful tool for social skills training in children with ASD.
Objectives:  

We are investigating a paradigm implemented on the Diamond Touch (DT) table, a Shared Active Surface (SAS), in order to enhance social interaction within children with ASD.

Methods:  The DT was originally prototyped by the Mitsubishi Electronic Research Laboratory and is now commercialized by CircleTwelve Inc. The DiamondTouch has a 32-inch diagonal surface that can be placed flat on a standard table. The graphical user interface is projected onto this surface. When a user touches the surface, antennas near the touch point couple an extremely small amount of signal through the user's body and to the receiver. In this way DiamondTouch can distinguish who is touching and distinguish between simultaneous inputs from multiple users. This unique characteristic enables the implementation of cooperative gestures to support applications that either completely or partly enforce collaboration.
Results:  
In this session we will present two applications of the DT (“StoryTable and "Join in") aimed at enhancing social interaction of children with ASD.  In the StoryTable application, pairs of children interact to construct a common story. In this application we investigated a specific case of cooperative gestures, named “enforced collaboration”, that require that actions on digital objects be carried out by two or more users simultaneously. Preliminary investigation with dyads of children with high functioning autism has shown that forcing the simultaneous execution of selected tasks may foster the recognition of the presence of the other, stimulate social behavior   and improve social skills.
More recently we have developed a design framework for applying principles and techniques based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to implement scenarios that support the development of social skills in children with ASD.  One example is “Join In”, a game played by two users who must jointly move a basket beneath apple trees by simultaneously touching and dragging on it.  The level of difficulty can be graded and complexity can be enhanced.  Prior to playing “Join In”, the scenario includes clarification of the concept "collaboration"; the children are exposed to a series of solutions to the problem of how to best gather the apples (e.g., call for help from an adult, not gather the apples at all) and are challenged to chose the "best" solution.  The children are gradually made aware of the advantages of working together to solve the problem. Once this concept is clarified, the application itself enforces collaboration and further emphasizes its benefits.

Conclusions:   We will demonstrate how the “StoryTable”, and “Join In” are used to enhance socials skills of children with ASD.