People with disabilities, such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and intellectual developmental disabilities (IDD) may experience obstacles in social, communication, vocational, and behavioral skills that limit their participation. Video modeling (VM) entails demonstrating desired behaviors through video simulation. Its effectiveness in encouraging adaptive behaviors in work-related social activities has been demonstrated for ASD and IDD. Gamification is the application of game attributes to nongame situations. Within health care, education, and rehabilitation, gamification has included simulations of real-life events to engage clients and improve function. In this conceptual paper, we examined the link between gamification’s intrinsic attributes and the VM paradigm through examples of our evolving VM studies for individuals with ASD and IDD. The discussed interfaces demonstrate gamification attributes that likely contributed to their usability and effectiveness. This conceptual framework illustrated a new perspective concerning the effectiveness of VM paradigms. We encourage clinicians and technology developers to consider the value of incorporating gamification when designing VM interventions to enhance independence in the daily lives of vulnerable populations. Embracing gamified VM can promote engaging interventions, enhancing skill acquisition across diverse populations.

Joint narratives are often used in the context of reconciliation interventions for people in social conflict situations, which arise, for example, due to ethnic or religious differences. The interventions aim to encourage a change in attitudes of the participants towards each other. Typically, a human mediator is fundamental for achieving a successful intervention. In this work, we present an automated approach to support remote interactions between pairs of participants as they contribute to a shared story in their own language. A key component is an automated cognitive tutor that guides the participants through a controlled escalation/de-escalation process during the development of a joint narrative. We performed a controlled study comparing a trained human mediator to the automated mediator. The results demonstrate that an automated mediator, although simple at this stage, effectively supports interactions and helps to achieve positive outcomes comparable to those attained by the trained human mediator.

The design of tangible and embedded assistive technologies poses unique challenges. We describe the challenges we encountered during the design of "DataSpoon", explain how we overcame them, and suggest design guidelines. DataSpoon is an instrumented spoon that monitors movement kinematics during self-feeding. Children with motor disorders often encounter difficulty mastering self-feeding. In order to treat them effectively, professional caregivers need to assess their movement kinematics. Currently, assessment is performed through observations and questionnaires. DataSpoon adds sensor-based data to this process. A validation study showed that data obtained from DataSpoon and from a 6-camera 3D motion capture system were similar. Our experience yielded three design guidelines: needs of both caregivers and children should be considered; distractions to direct caregiver-child interaction should be minimized; familiar-looking devices may alleviate concerns associated with unfamiliar technology.

Many children with cerebral palsy (CP) encounter great difficulties mastering self-feeding. We set out to assess the self-feeding skills of young children with CP via a novel instrumented spoon that monitors upper extremity biomechanics involved in eating. We describe the initial stages of an iterative design process, consisting of a focus group with domain experts, and rapid-prototyping. We discuss the physical, assessment and safety requirements for the spoon. In addition, we explain the potential of tangible interfaces to provide professional caregivers with valuable information regarding each child.

In this article the results of a usability study of CONTACT, an application that supports negotiation strategy training via video modeling for enhancing the conflict resolution of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), are presented. This application was modified from the NoProblem! prototype based on feedback from two focus groups of typically developing adolescents and therapists and teachers of adolescents with ASD. It has been designed to address social competencies through video modeling and complies with the principles of constructivist learning theory. Twenty-one adolescents with ASD, 12 to 18 years of age, and 27 age- and gender-matched typically developing adolescents participated in this study. The outcome measure used was the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory. Both adolescents with ASD and typically developing adolescents perceived the application to be interesting and enjoyable; they claimed that it did not generate feelings of pressure or tension and that they had independent choices. The results also showed that adolescents with ASD felt significantly more competent than typically developing adolescents when using this application. The findings of this study emphasize the important role that the usability process has when designing and developing new technologies for educational purposes for adolescents with and without ASD.

Typically developing children usually master selffeeding by the age of three years. However, children with Cerebral Palsy and other developmental disabilities encounter great difficulties acquiring this instrumental ability. In an effort to motivate young eaters in the process of acquiring selffeeding abilities, we set out to develop ExciteTray a customized selffeeding assistive technology. We describe the initial stages of an iterative design process consisting of interviews with domain experts, rapidprototyping, and evaluations with children. Based on our findings, we formulated preliminary design principles for a selffeeding assistive technology: draw attention without causing distraction; motivate the child during the various stages of selffeeding; facilitate facetoface interaction between caregiver and child; adapt feedback to the cognitive and motor ability of each child. We explain how these principles were implemented in a prototype, discuss safety considerations and describe future work.

A multi-user tabletop interface was designed to support reconciliation of a conflict aimed at shifting hostile attitudes and achieving a greater understanding of another viewpoint. The interface provided a setting for face-to-face shared narration and support for the management of disagreements. The interface allows for escalation and de-escalation of the conflict emerging in the shared narration and requires that participants perform joint actions when a contribution to the story is to be removed from the overall narration. A between-subjects experiment compared the tabletop interface and a desktop multimedia interface with mixed pairs (male Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian-Arab youth). The results demonstrated that the experience with the tabletop interface appears to be motivating and, most importantly, produces at least a short-term shift of attitude toward the other.

The COSPATIAL (Communication and social participation: collaborative technologies for interaction and learning) project explores how we can develop effective and useful educational technologies in the form of shared active surfaces (SASs) and collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) to support the enhancement of social competence skills for children with autism spectrum conditions (ASC). This paper presents a description of the COSPATIAL suite of applications, comprising of two CVE programs and two SAS programs.

In this paper we describe a co-located suite of games on a tabletop device to support social competence training for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. This suite has been designed to use patterns of collaboration to support therapists in their use of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT). In this paper, we discuss the observations collected during a field study where two therapists used the system for social competence training sessions with 8 children. We conclude with lessons learned from meshing software enhanced collaboration within the CBT model.

COSPATIAL is a multi-disciplinary project that is using collaborative virtual reality and tabletop devices for training social competence within the theoretical framework of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. Our ultimate objective is to create a set of patterns for designing applications in collaborative technologies that are suitable for children with autism as well as typically developing children. We describe the rationale for CBT-informed design of collaborative technologies and background related work. Initial steps towards development of a design framework are presented, with illustrated examples from one concept design application for each of the two technologies under consideration. The project is ongoing and an iterative design process will be used to develop and evaluate the applications and further refine the design framework.

So called intractable conflicts may benefit from more modest and socially oriented approaches than those based on classical conflict resolution techniques. This paper is inspired by theories on small group intervention in a conflict. The general claim is that participants may achieve a greater understanding of and appreciation for the other's viewpoint under conditions that support partaking in a tangible joint task and creating a shared narration. Our goal was to design a methodology wherein the extent to which technology contributes to conflict negotiation and resolution could be assessed. Specifically, a co-located interface for producing a joint narration as a tool for favouring reconciliation is presented and discussed. The results of an initial set of studies where the interface was used by Arab and Jewish youth in Israel provided insight into the usability of the various components of the technology and of the paradigm.

In this paper we describe a pilot study for an intervention aimed at enhancing social skills in high functioning children with autism. We found initial evidences that the use of a, social interaction and may lessen the repetitive behaviors typical of autism. These positive effects also appear to be transferred to other tasks following the intervention. We hypothesize that the effect is due to some unique characteristics of the interfaces used, in particular enforcing some tasks to be done together through the use of multiple-user GUI actions.

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the adaptations that have been done to VividGroup's Gesture Xtreme projected VR scenarios in order to facilitate their use in neurological rehabilitation. First, the scenarios and the adaptation (control of the type, speed, location and direction of all stimuli) are briefly described. The advantages and limitations of the adapted VR system as a rehabilitation tool are presented. Next, initial results and two examples of case studies, one a patient following stroke and one who requires balance training as a result of complete spinal cord injury, are used to illustrate applications of this VR system to rehabilitation. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.