Common sense assistant for writing stories that teach social skills

Abstract

People on the autistic spectrum often have difficulties with social interaction, and these difficulties are compounded when a person faces the uncertainty of not knowing what to expect in a new social setting. Detailed, step-by-step explanations of people's intentions and plausible actions can often help autistic people make of the situation, adapt to the social rules, and reduce stress associated with the social encounter. Carol Gray's Social Stories? are carefully structured stories designed to prepare autistic people for everyday situations such as smiling at friends, waiting in a line, and staying calm in an audience when the speaker's slides don't match the handouts. Teachers or parents writing these stories often forget to include explanations of simple, common sense facts and simple variations of the story that might occur in different circumstances. We present a new tool that helps the writer explain salient points and think of more variations of the story. It uses a knowledge base of Common Sense sentences, Open Mind Common Sense, and inference in a semantic network, ConceptNet. We are investigating whether this new tool's suggestions are useful by examining how often the writers choose and use the suggestions that it generates.