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Autism research is beginning to gain mainstream traction, but there are still limited resources to help children with autism. Teachers try several therapies to teach behaviors, something autistic children find challenging. However, teachers find it difficult to understand why their students act the way they do.
Social Cues Game for Autism is an educational, VR, eye-tracking game that tests the students' social cue recognition and records/analyzes difficult cues. It is ultimately meant to teach young autistic students how to recognize and response to social cues.
This game uses the FOVE's eye-tracking data to understand where autistic students are looking in realistic social situations. This data is used to generate a behavioral report and recommended guides for the teacher's IEP (Individualized Education Program). The data is also used to change the game for the student to practice social situations they struggle with. Last but not least, I collect this data for research purposes to create a portfolio of diverse personalities and their associated eye-tracking patterns, struggles, and learning curve. The game itself is simply putting the student in various social situations to practice their skills. By using VR, students are more inclined to play, and the environments themselves will be immersive and fun. And best, they do not face real-world, damaging consequences of their mistakes, since the whole point is to learn.
Written from the perspective of project lead, Helen Cheng:
When my friends come from work, they talk to me about their day. One is a San Diego substitute teacher and another is a K-2 special education teacher. Sometimes they tell me about their students - who was acting up that day, what behaviors they had trouble with, which incentives worked (if any at all).
For the substitute friend, he often works in elementary school, where autistic children's behaviors often go unchecked because they're either 1) not dealt with at all or 2) automatically graduated to the next grade, to new material and environments that they're still not ready for. We would discuss this often, wondering what the children needed and what a substitute, in his limited time, can even do.
For my K-2 special ed teacher friend, he's been with them for a few years. He's able to manage their progress over time and, unlike many teachers, tries to teach them proper behaviors. This means finding their problem behaviors, incentives, and so on.
In both, managing and teaching behaviors come first. There's only some time leftover to teach things like math or reading. A project like this could make their behavioral lesson plans easier and free up more time to teach other content. And of course, autistic students learn to recognize and response to social cues over time.
The goal is to create a minimum viable product, test with students in the area and interview teachers (need to find permission/willing schools), and iterate. We will be collecting data on the research and hopefully create profiles over time of common behaviors/situations that best suit certain personalities of students across the spectrum.
We currently use the FOVE, though we're open to using other eye-tracking headsets. Everything was made in Unity, though we are in the process of learning Blendr to create our own 3D models.