Assistant Professor
School of Interactive Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology
riedl@cc.gatech.edu

  
 
 

Refl-ex Autism Intervention

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have very individualistic needs, abilities, and are surrounded by very different social contexts. Consequently, special education and therapeutic interventions often need to be adapted to a particular individual. We are interested in developing systems that can help adolescents with high-functioning ASD (HFASD) rehearse and learn social skills with reduced aide from parents, guardians, teachers, and therapists. However, we recognize that there is not a one-size-fits-all solution to social skills training for young adults with HFASD.  We are developing asocial skills learning game that utilizes techniques from intelligent tutoring systems and interactive entertainment.  To overcome the limitations of generalizability, we are researching artificial intelligence techniques that assist parents, guardians, teachers, and therapists with the development of learning content individualized to individuals with HFASD.

The project also involves a tangible interface that tests the individual with HFASD for storytelling and recall, known to be correlated with social problem solving.

Contributors

  • Rosa Arriaga, research scientist (Fall 2008 - present)
  • Juane Heflin, professor, Department of Educational Psychology and Special Education, Georgia State University (Spring 2009 - present)
  • Jackie Isbell, graduate research assistant, Georgia State University (Spring 2009 - present)
  • Fatima Boujarwah, graduate research assistant (Spring 2009 - present)
  • Hwajung Hong, graduate research assistant (Spring 2009 - present)
  • Jan Gillesen, exchange student, Eindhoven University of Technology (Fall 2008)

 
Media
 

Related Publications

Mark O. Riedl, Rosa Arriaga, Fatima Boujarwah, Hwajung Hong, Jackie Isbell, and L. Juane Heflin. Graphical social scenarios: Toward intervention and authoring for adolescents with high functioning autism. Proceedings of the of the AAAI Fall Symposium on Virtual Healthcare Interaction, Arlington, VA, 2009.

Mark O. Riedl, Jackie Isbell, Rosa Arriaga, Fatima Boujarwah, Hwajung Hong, and L. Juane Heflin. Toward Assisted Authoring of Social Skill Scenarios for Young Adults with High Functioning Autism. Proceedings of the IJCAI 2009 Workshop on Intelligent Systems for Assisted Cognition, Pasadena, California, 2009. Distinguished Contribution Award.

Jan Gillesen, Hwajung Hong, and Rosa Arriaga. Refl-ex: Towards Designing An Interactive and Intelligent Tool for Social Skill Development of Individuals with HFA/ASD. Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces, Compiegne, France, 2009.

Jan Gillesen, Rosa Arriaga, and Mark O. Riedl. Towards Designing An Interactive and Intelligent Tool for Social Skill Development of Individuals with HFA. Proceedings of the 2009 Annual Meeing for Autism Research (IMFAR), Chicago, Illinois, 2009.