Improving Joint Attention in Children with Autism: A VR-AR Enabled Game Approach

Abstract

Autism Spectrum Disease (ASD) can be referred to as one type of neurodevelopmental disorder, causing communication or behavioral disabilities in multiple severity levels. These challenges cause difficulties in communication, interaction, problem-solving, etc. Though having no persistent cure for ASD, several treatments and intervention strategies prevail for their behavioral development. These treatments include social skill training, sensory integration, and occasional therapy, etc. Many of these researches highly emphasize joint attention, which is the common issue of most autism cases. Joint or shared attention is highly essential for language and communication skill development. In this work, we proposed a game-based approach to improving the joint attention of children with autism. This approach focuses on the efficiency of skilling up their shared attention by interacting with digital models through problem-solving. We integrate AR (Augmented Reality) and VR (Virtual Reality) technologies for solving this issue. Using these technologies, we have designed an interactive multi-staged game module, including several types of real-life alike problems. Problem-solving and interacting with these mascots can help children build up learning and communication skills, which sometimes real-life interaction may find challenging. Again, eye screening and health can be issues in the device-centric scheme. An analytical survey has been presented in this work, confirming that all these health issues have been carefully considered. Implementation and outperforming results of this work will give a clear stand about the effectiveness of this module. Besides, we present sufficient analytics confirming that this module can also be efficient for normal children.