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Design and Impacts of Virtual Reality Games on Social and Cognitive Skills of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abbasi, Sajjad | 2022

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 55123 (08)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Mechanical Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Taheri, Alireza; Meghdari, Ali
  7. Abstract:
  8. Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder for which there is no definitive cure and it is increasing every year for people with this disorder. In the last decade, the use of virtual environment to improve the skills of people on the autism spectrum has increased. In this research, a semi-intelligent algorithm was designed for a virtual reality game that could provide a more appropriate step to the user according to the user's responses. Our focus is on designing games to strengthen the child in terms of shared attention and eye contact. In other words, we seek to create a virtual environment with the ability to intelligently adapt to interact with our user and turn it into a suitable coaching assistant (artificial intelligence called the Behavior Tree). The system, through algorithmic updates, was able to adaptively determine the level of games ahead while interacting with the child and observing his performance. Clinical intervention sessions were performed with three subjects on the autism spectrum (two high-functioning individuals and one low-functioning individual) with a mean age of 7 years for 45 days / 12 20-minute sessions. Despite the short duration of the course, acceptable results were reported by families, for example, improving one of the children's handwriting and strengthening their auditory memory. Children have improved in reducing autism syndrome according to Garz questionnaire with Cohen-d average of 0.628 and also 0.523 for autism treatment questionnaire and in the other questionnaires there was no change in privacy. Based on the results extracted from the data stored in the training sessions, the category of P3 subject performance in homework, significant improvement with a significance level of 95% (p <0.05) and Cohen-d number 0.693 in the second half. Sessions have been recorded since the first half. In many previous studies, it might not have been possible to develop and interact with children without the help of a psychologist during the sessions, but in our system, the child was taught in a virtual environment alone and curiously and with much less supervision. The beauty of virtual reality technology is that it separates the user from real-world noise / disturbances. Achieve interpretations of the obtained diagrams (from the data of simultaneous / online performance of the child in the game) from each user in order to use this tool by non-experts (easier access to parents) and analyze the data of the secondary goals of this Is researc
  9. Keywords:
  10. Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) ; Human Robot Interaction (HRI) ; Eye Contact ; Imitation ; Serious Game ; Learning ; Hearing ; Vision ; Long-term Memory ; Virtual Reality (VR)Environment ; Joint Attention ; Symbolism

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