Abstract
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a lifelong neurodevelopmental disorder that affects brain development. The prevalence of ASD is one in 68 children. Low social motivation is the main cause in developing social communication skills deficiency. As a result, it is becoming difficult for them to express themselves, to be able to manage social interactions, and they lack the ability to comfort others and even share their own feelings. This study aimed to design a mobile application based on augmented reality (AR) focusing on social interactions and communication aspect for children with ASD. The scope is in emotion recognition, which makes use of emotional icons to help them improve their social skills, more specifically on helping them to recognize various emotions. The emotions are represented by emojis inspired by Dr. Paul Ekman who has created the basic six emotions, namely happiness, sadness, disgust, fear, surprise, and angry. Additional emotions such as confound face, winking with tongue, cold sweat, blowing kiss, flushed, sleepy, disappointed, and winking are included. AR is able to gage the children’s attention when they view the animated emojis. The application enables the children with ASD to be more willing in recognizing different emotional expressions and improve their social skills by expressing their own feelings. The scope of the study is limited to emotion recognition. It is developed based on literature reviews without guidance of any certified ASD specialist. AR is an interactive technology that places digital information in our physical world in real time, providing precise registration in all three dimensions. Existing literature proved that the traditional face-to-face teaching methods have failed to increase the interest and ability of ASD children because the teacher has full control in the classroom. This study adds value to the existing works to incorporate AR as additional intervention in treating ASD children.
Highlights
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulty learning to understand, recognize, and manage emotions. This challenge has to be embraced as learning to understand emotions can help ASD children to respond to other people
Current intervention methods for children with ASD are limited. These intervention methods are mostly based on in-person or social skill-group behavioral therapies done by professional therapists
The practice presents an opportunity for the ASD children to rehearse the social skills repeatedly
Summary
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulty learning to understand, recognize, and manage emotions This challenge has to be embraced as learning to understand emotions can help ASD children to respond to other people. Traditional teaching methods such as using everyday interactions and tools like emotion cards and social stories lack interactive elements to provide immersing experience and interest for children with ASD. This has caused them having difficulty to stay motivated and focused during learning, making them lose their interests quickly and stop learning. These intervention methods are usually costly, which most families cannot afford
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