A new form of societal therapy for children with autism spectrum disorderliness ( ASD ) that uses a smartphone app geminate with Google Glass express promise for amend their power to recognize the emotion underlie facial expressions and increasing foundation of eye touch , according to a pilot burner field by Stanford University .
Because it is used at abode with the child ’s family , rather than in engagement with specialists , the technology - based approach could enablemore ASD childrento receiveearly intervention – known to be vital for high functioning later in life-time – and allow them to become at comfort in veridical - cosmos social interactions .
“ We have too few autism practitioners , ” lead research worker Dennis Wall aver in astatement . “ The only way to break through the job is to produce true , home - based intervention organisation . It ’s a really of import unmet need . ”
Writing innpj Digital Medicine , Wall and his fellow describe how the system was developed to treat the societal deficit of ASD using the same principles as the gold stock therapy ofapplied behavioral analysis(ABA ) andnaturalistic developmental behavioural interventions(NDBIs ) . First , they created and evaluated a Google Glass program that can discover eight universal facial expressions through its camera : happiness , sadness , wrath , disgust , surprise , fear , neutral , and contempt . Then , the team incorporate this facial acknowledgment software into an app that uses the twist ’s filmdom and loudspeaker to supply audiovisual feedback to the user about the saying of people in the field of view and take them in identifying the associated emotions through structured games .
In the current investigation , Wall ’s chemical group evaluated the finished organisation – name “ Superpower Glass ” – in 14 ASD youngster aged 3 to 17 . The participants and their families were demand to finish three or more 20 - minute Roger Huntington Sessions per week for at least one calendar month and up to 4.5 calendar month . small fry could choose between a free - frolic mode and two game modes .
Results from behavioral questionnaire fill up out by participants ’ parents before and after the trial began showed that 100 percent of tiddler had improvements in ASD social symptom . Six nestling had significant enough score decreases that their ASD classification could be modify to a less severe stratum ( four get going from “ terrible ” to “ moderate ” , one from “ restrained ” to “ mild ” , and one from “ modest ” to “ normal ” ) .
Interviews with the menage break that 12 of the 14 children made more eye contact after using Superpower Glass and all child were uncoerced to assume the gadget .
Donji Cullenbine , the female parent of 9 - year - old player Alex , told the Stanford News Center that the Superpower Glass facilitated a breakthrough that had eluded the family antecedently .
“ I would smile and say thing like , ‘ You looked at me three time today ! ’ But it did n’t really move the measure . [ The machine ] was a game environment in which he wanted to win – he wanted to guess right , ” she said .
After a few hebdomad of academic term , Alex happily began to pick up on excited pool stick . “ He tell me , ‘ Mommy , I can say minds ! ’ My nub talk . I ’d like other patents to have the same experience . ”
Despite the overwhelmingly positive feedback , the authors are cautious to jump to conclusions about efficaciousness due to the lack of a dominance group , which prevented them from accounting for instinctive changes in the nestling ’s demeanour over time . A larger , randomise ascendance trial that will evaluate an updated interpretation of the system is in the works .
