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 The prototype tool, called Superpower Glass, uses games to help
children recognize faces and emotions while interacting with family
and friends.
"Waiting lists for behavioral therapy are sometimes 18 months long,
and families often have to navigate the complexity of the healthcare
system on their own to find help," said senior study author Dennis
Wall of Stanford University in California.
About 1 in 68 children in the U.S. have autism, according to the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Children with autism spectrum disorder struggle to recognize facial
expressions, make eye contact and engage in social interactions, but
many can improve dramatically if social skills are taught from an
early age, Wall's team notes in NPJ Digital Medicine.
"The sooner we can help children after diagnosis, the better off
they'll be," Wall said in a phone interview. "It's heartbreaking to
think of kids missing opportunities while waiting for therapy."
The researchers developed Superpower Glass, a
machine-learning-assisted software system that runs on the Google
Glass headset and an Android smartphone. The software recognizes
eight emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, distrust, surprise, fear,
neutral and contempt (or "meh" in child-friendly terms). Games such
as Capture the Smile and Guess the Emotion guide children through
facial and emotional recognition by displaying emoticons on the
monitor or speaking audibly.
The research team provided the prototype to 14 families and asked
them to complete three or more 20-minute sessions per week over one
to four months. The kids were assessed before and after the study
period with tests measuring social responsiveness, facial
recognition, eye contact and social acuity. Researchers also asked
the parents for feedback on how engaging, useful and fun the
prototype was.
Overall, 12 of the 14 families said they noticed an increase in eye
contact by their child, and six children moved to a less severe
classification of autism. The assessments also showed improvements
in recognizing intent, social interaction, social initiation, eye
contact and accurate labeling of emotions after kids used the tool.
"The way we do therapy today is effective but . . . doesn't always
generalize well to a child's natural environment," Wall said.
"Flashcards can reinforce emotion recognition, but they can only
contain so much information."
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Limitations of the study include the small number of participants
and the lack of a control group. For instance, the researchers can't
say for sure whether the changes were due to the software itself,
the kids' growing maturity or another aspect of the experiment
process such as focused interactions with friends and family.
Also, the researchers, the families are from the San Francisco Bay
area and may be more tech-savvy than in other parts of the country,
where wearables may feel uncomfortable to use at home. The headset
itself, they add, sometimes had a short battery life and
difficulties with charging.
"This study underscores the importance of leaving the perfected
context of a lab and going into the reality of a home," said Ned
Sahin, founder and CEO of Brain Power, a Cambridge, Massachusetts
company that uses wearable artificial-intelligence systems to help
people with brain-related challenges.
"We have personally interacted with hundreds of families impacted by
autism, and we've found that these products help parents and
children feel more connected," he told Reuters Health by phone.
"This provides scientifically-based, well-grounded hope that is
needed on those really tough days."
Researchers are also using eye tracking technology and haptic
feedback devices to better understand how children with autism
understand their environment and focus their attention, said Ouriel
Grynszpan of the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, who
wasn't involved with the study.
"There's not one tool or one technology that will solve the whole
problem, but the more there are available, the more chances that
parents may find the best technology for their kid," he told Reuters
Health by phone. "This field is going to change a lot in the next
few years, and we hope the technology will be recognized and
supported by the autism community."
Wall's team has conducted a randomized controlled trial with similar
results to their pilot study. They hope to seek regulatory approval
and then pursue medical insurance reimbursements.
SOURCE: https://go.nature.com/2LTgfPo NPJ Digital Medicine, online
August 2, 2018.
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