Social Communication between Virtual Characters an

Authors: Alyssa Alcorn Helen Pain Gnanathusharan Rajendran Tim Smith Oliver Lemon Kaska PorayskaPomsta Mary Ellen Foster Katerina Avramides Christopher Frauenberger Sara Bernardini

Publish Date: 2011/6/28

Volume: , Issue: , Pages: 7-14

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Abstract

Children with ASD have difficulty with social communication particularly joint attention Interaction in a virtual environment VE may be a means for both understanding these difficulties and addressing them It is first necessary to discover how this population interacts with virtual characters and whether they can follow joint attention cues in a VE This paper describes a study in which 32 children with ASD used the ECHOES VE to assist a virtual character in selecting objects by following the character’s gaze and/or pointing Both accuracy and reaction time data suggest that children were able to successfully complete the task and qualitative data further suggests that most children perceived the character as an intentional being with relevant mutually directed behaviour

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