Journal Article

Augmented Reality for Autistic Children to Enhance Their Understanding of Facial Expressions

Alturki, Ryan, Alfalah, Salsabeel F. M., Wedyan, Mohammad, Al-Jumaily, Adel, Elshaweesh, Omar, Falah, Jannat, Giannopulu, Irini

2021

Overview

Difficulty in understanding the feelings and behavior of other people is considered one of the main symptoms of autism. Computer technology has increasingly been used in interventions with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), especially augmented reality, to either treat or alleviate ASD symptomatology. Augmented reality is an engaging type of technology that helps children interact easily and understand and remember information, and it is not limited to one age group or level of education. This study utilized AR to display faces with six different basic facial expressions—happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, disgust, and anger—to help children to recognize facial features and associate facial expressions with a simultaneous human condition. The most important point of this system is that children can interact with the system in a friendly and safe way. Additionally, our results showed the system enhanced social interactions, talking, and facial expressions for both autistic and typical children. Therefore, AR might have a significant upcoming role in talking about the therapeutic necessities of children with ASD. This paper presents evidence for the feasibility of one of the specialized AR systems.

• Publisher: MDPI AG
• Subject: Augmented reality / augmented reality prospects / Autism / Autistic children / Communication / Emotions / facial expressions / Feature recognition / human computer interaction / Hypotheses / Peers / Research methodology / Social factors / Social skills