The final project for the interdisciplinary master’s degree in Cognitive Systems and Interactive Media (CSIM) at UPF, whose author is Ciera Crowell: “Lands of Fog, Implementation and Evaluation of a Full-body Interaction Virtual Environment for Promoting Social Behaviors in Children with Autism”, directed by lecturers Joan Mora Guiard and Narcís Parés, researchers of the Cognitive Media Technologies (CMTECH) research group at the Department of Information and Communication Technologies (DTIC) has won the 2^nd AIPO 2016 competition, an award announced by the Human-Computer Interaction Association (AIPO), which brings together researchers working in this field of knowledge from the Iberian Peninsula as well as in Latin America.

Promoting the socialization of children with autistic spectrum disorder

Autistic spectrum disorders are a group of neurodevelopmental conditions that, in practice, result in difficulties with social skills, including learning and relationships with other children. As the author of the work explains, “my CSIM thesis focused on experimental design and data analysis in a full-body interactive environment created to promote socialization among children with autistic spectrum disorder”.  ”Taking advantage of the fact that children with autism have a special affinity with computers and video games, we used this as a starting point to create a full-body interactive video game that motivates children to play with a partner, thus promoting sociability in a calm and quiet environment”, says Crowell.

The game Lands of Fog was developed as part of a research project funded by the  2013 RecerCaixa call, the IN-AUTIS-TIC project. Ciera Crowell joined the team in 2014 and worked together with teams of researchers, designers and psychologists. The game consists of projecting on the floor a large virtual environment in which children can actively explore with a partner, play together and interactively search for mythical creatures and magical objects.

Experimental work involving autistic children

Crowell’s specific task was to organize an experimental video protocol to test that socialization and collaboration among players are indeed enhanced. “We were looking for the necessary changes, such as activity level, flexibility, style of play, and the number of social interactions (requests, responses, initiations) of each child with autism”, said the author.

The master’s degree thesis contains the first series of experiments conducted with 10 autistic children and 10 neurotypical children. Each child played the video game in three different sessions, with a different partner each time. The results showed an increase in the frequency of social events performed by each child with autism, as well as an increased level of flexibility and activity. In addition, it was found that the children cooperated more while playing, and the physical distance between the players was reduced during the sessions.

This research is particularly significant for Ciera Crowell because as she explained, “I like working with children, trying to understand the unique perspective of these children and with the feeling that I can introduce something positive to their lives, as well as hope for parents, teachers and psychologists, who are beginning to understand the importance of continuing research with an ICT approach to improve the quality of life of children with autism”.

The project, presented at the AIPO competition, won first prize in the master’s degree final project category of 350 euros and free registration for the 17^th edition of the International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Interaction 2016, which is to take place from 13 to 16 September in Salamanca, where on 15 September the prizes are to be awarded. 

Reference work:

Ciera Crowell, “Lands of Fog, Implementation and Evaluation of a Full-body Interaction Virtual Environment for Promoting Social Behaviors in Children with Autism”, final project of the interdisciplinary master’s degree in Cognitive Systems and Interactive Media at UPF, 2016 graduates. Supervised by Joan Mora and Narcís Parés Guiard. AIPO Prize 2016.