Past Grants
Innovative Technology for Autism Initiative
Click on researcher name for biography information, if available.
2006
Gregory D. Abowd., D.Phil.
Georgia Institute of Technology
Technology Support for the Early Detection of Autism
Early detection of developmental delays such as autism can lead to early interventions that help individuals overcome the disability. Current screening techniques for autism are only effective for children at least as old as two years, but research suggests there are earlier signs of developmental delay. In conjunction with initiatives, such as the CDC's Learn the Signs: Act Early, we aim to produce affordable and effective solutions for proactive collection of developmental growth information from birth. Our research is aimed at collecting evidence of developmental progress in homes from birth. We will help parents to understand developmental growth of their children and to communicate that information to medical professionals more effectively. To do this, we will develop sensing and recording technologies that can be used in homes and daycare settings. We will leverage existing practices, such as the use of baby calendars, and common household items, such as baby monitors and children's toys.
Justine Cassell, Ph.D.
Northwestern University
Innovative Technology for Autism Award
Authorable Virtual Peers for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often lack the appropriate communication and reciprocal social interaction skills that lay the groundwork for academic and social achievement. However, these same children may spend hours interacting with computer games. In our previous work, we have developed a technology called virtual peers (VPs), 3D life-size animated characters that look like children and are capable of interacting, sharing real toys, and responding to children's input, and we have demonstrated that they can employ the natural activities of peer collaboration and storytelling to significantly increase children's emergent literacy and social behaviors. In the current work we propose to design and evaluate a computer system that allows children with ASD to interact with a life-size virtual peer, as well as to author interactions with that virtual peer (i.e., create and control the communication behaviors of virtual peers as a way of understanding and scaffolding their own communication and reciprocal social interaction in typical social settings). Studying the effects of the virtual peer may lead to important information about the underlying mechanisms of communication and social reciprocity in ASD, while also providing an innovative intervention for ASD.
Jessica Hodgins, Ph.D.
Carnegie Mellon University
ITA Bridge Grant
Activity Logging using Accelerometers
Logging of activities is essential for measuring the progress of children with autism and the effectiveness of new interventions. However, logging is burdensome for the therapist or parent and requires time that could otherwise be spent on activities with the child. We propose to automatically log the activities of a child using accelerometers worn on the shoes and wrist. We will use information about human motion contained in a pre-recorded and labeled database to accurately reconstruct the child's motion from low dimensional input signals (accelerations). Using this reconstruction, we will be able to create a log of labeled activities along with their duration. We envision that this log will be useful both in assessing the change induced by a particular intervention and in allowing parents or therapists to discover connections between interactions and behaviors.
Felicia D. Hurewitz, Ph.D.
University of Delaware
Innovative Technology for Autism Award
Computerized Language Training Using GrammarTrainer
This project provides efficacy testing of a computerized speech/language intervention designed for children on the autistic spectrum. GrammarTrainer (www.autism-language-therapies.com) is a linguistically informed, multi-level curriculum that systematically encourages students to produce syntactic constructions of progressively increasing complexity. We investigate the degree to which this computer assisted intervention (CAI) can remediate syntactic, morphosyntactic and pragmatic deficits in productive speech and writing. In addition, we test the efficacy and offer further development of a production-based system, where the student must fully generate responses on the computer, as compared to commonly marketed products that only require the child to receptively interpret language.
Kerry L. Marsh, Ph.D.
University of Connecticut
ITA Bridge Grant
Assessing Synchrony as a Basis for Social Connection in Autism
One important issue in autistic spectrum disorders is understanding and ameliorating sociality deficits in individuals with autism. Forming a minimal social bond with others may require responding to others at a very basic perceptual and behavioral level. That is, it may require that one has the ability and inclination to unconsciously come into synchrony with the movements of others. Social psychologist Kerry Marsh and collaborators at the University of Connecticut will use cutting-edge technologies that continuously track individuals' movements over time to examine whether individuals with autism spontaneously synchronize rocking chair movements with that of another individual. Using the tenets of human movement science, dynamical systems theory, and ecological psychology, the researchers will seek to find particular patterns of coordinated movement in autistic individuals, and they will isolate what particular processes (e.g., attentional or movement-based) might account for deficiencies that arise. Understanding the processes that generate potential deficiencies may suggest potential avenues by which researchers can redress limitations in the autistic individuals' tendencies to experience social connectedness.
Ariella Popple, Ph.D.
University of California, Berkeley
ITA Bridge Grant
Eye-Contact Training
Eye-contact is important for communication between people in our society. Studies have shown that people who make little or no eye-contact are viewed as less attractive, and are therefore less likely to be successful. Individuals with autism and Asperger's syndrome typically have problems making eye-contact. In fact, impairment in eye-to-eye gaze is a characteristic commonly used to diagnose those with autism and Asperger's syndrome. The goal of this project is to train individuals with autism and Asperger's syndrome to make more eye-contact. The technology uses 'gaze-contingent animation' to make a face presented on the computer screen smile when the observer is looking at the eyes. The faces are presented briefly, and the viewer's task is to recognize them. Studies have shown that a smile activates reward centers in the human brain. The viewer learns to make more eye-contact to associating eye-contact with this reward, although he or she may be unaware of the changes in expression or the eye-contact.
Ilene Schwartz, Ph.D.
University of Washington
ITA Bridge Grant
Automated Data Capture in Early Childhood Classrooms
Collecting accurate data and using these data to make instructional decision is an important of a high quality early intervention program for children with autism. Although special education teachers have a long history of talking about data collection and data-based decision making, data collection often gets ignored in the complex and fast-paced environment of inclusive early childhood classrooms. The purpose of this grant is to demonstrate the effectiveness of an automated data capture system in an early childhood classroom. This system is based on a system called Abaris that was developed to be used during discrete trial training (DTT) sessions with children with autism. The contextual differences between a DTT session and inclusive early childhood classrooms will require that major modifications are made to the system. The resulting system will have the potential to help improve data collection in special education classrooms and help pre-service teachers learn more about data collection and data-based decision making.
Karl Smith
Accelerations Educational Software
ITA Bridge Grant
Generalization Support Project for the DT Trainer
The DT Trainer is a software program that serves as an independent virtual tutor for children with autism. The goal of this project is to create DT Trainer features and components to facilitate the child's ability to generalize skills they learn DT Trainer and apply them to real life situations. There are three aspects of this project: 1) Create a 3D to 2D set with corresponding DT Trainer content programs. 2) Create sets of laminated images from some of the DT Trainer programs. 3) Add an image printing feature to the DT Trainer.
Patricia L. Weiss, Ph.D.
University of Haifa, Israel
ITA Bridge Grant
Enhancing Social Communication through Story-Telling Among High-Functioning Children with Autism
Children with High Functioning Autism (HFA) have the basic verbal ability for creating a story, but often lack the social understanding that is needed for such a task. Moreover, these children often prefer to play alone since they have difficulty in developing appropriate peer relationships and in interacting socially or emotionally with their peers. However, many of these children enjoy using technological devices such as computers since they provide direct and immediate feedback. We hypothesize that use of the MERL's DiamondTouch StoryTable, a very large touch screen that requires children to work together, will retain the advantages of working with a computer, yet add an important dimension, namely communication and interaction with others. In this study, the StoryTable is used with 10 pairs of boys with HFA, aged of 8-12 years who normally are associated together at school. Each pair of children will collaborate on story-telling on ten occasions over a three week period, learning how to interact with the aid of the StoryTable. We measure the children's abilities to operate the various StoryTable functions and also document their positive social interactions, negative social interactions and behaviors that are typical for children with autism. This information will enable us to determine the effectiveness of a technology-based collaboration paradigm to enhance social interaction.
2005
Gregory Abowd, D.Phil.
Georgia Institute of Technology
ITA Award
Technology Support to Track the Effectiveness of Intervention Therapies for Children with Autism
While there are many intervention therapies proposed to help children with autism overcome their various developmental issues, there is relatively little scientific knowledge about these interventions, and many researchers declare the need for better-controlled studies. Beyond clinical evidence of effectiveness, parents and other members in the network of caregivers for autistic individuals desire the ability to communicate information regarding the ongoing progress of a child so that better-informed decisions can be made with respect to treatment. Dr. Abowd is developing a collection of automated capture technologies to assist in the collection, analysis and visualization of relevant behavioral and performance information for children with autism. He will address both structured therapies with established data collection routines, such as discrete trial training, as well as less structured observations that occur throughout the day for children with autism and help determine positive or negative trends. Dr. Abowd is interested in combining automated and manual techniques for record keeping and hope to be able to merge information extracted directly from a child with autism through wearable sensors, sensed by the environment through cameras or other means, with valuable interpretations made by human caregivers.
Yoram Bonneh, Ph.D. and Misha Tsodyks, Ph.D.
The Weizman Institute of Science
ITA Bridge Grant
Spectral Analysis of Speech in Children with Autism - a Pilot Study
The speech of many children with autism appears abnormal and often described as machine-like or monotonic. The exact nature of this abnormality and the underlying mechanisms are currently unknown, and its understanding could give hints about the non-verbal cases. At the same time, a quantitative measure of these abnormalities could be useful for diagnosis. The current study will look for abnormalities in the speech of young (ages 4-6) children with autism, investigating the frequency (spectral) content. Preliminary results revealed significant spectral differences between children with autism and controls, but a larger sample is needed to rule out artifacts. In addition, the study will look for subtypes as well as possible correlation with other autistic properties and will investigate the possibility of "spectral diagnosis."
Olga Solomon, Ph.D.
University of Southern California
ITA Bridge Grant
Ethnography of Autism Project
Ethnography of Autism is an interdisciplinary project that provides an ethnographic perspective on autism and communication. Dr. Solomon and colleagues have collected approximately 600 hours of video- and audio - data, documenting communicative abilities of 32 three to eighteen -year -old children with levels of functioning across the autism spectrum as they interacted with family members at home and with teachers and peers at school. The results of this project provided important information about the impact of autistic children's impairments on everyday communication, elaborating and often contradicting findings derived from experimental psychological studies examining similar domains of functioning in laboratory settings. These results are immediately relevant for design of successful educational programs and innovative technological devices that support the area of strength (conversational turn-taking) for children across the autism spectrum, and especially for those children who do not communicate through the use of vocal speech. To this end, the investigators have followed a cohort of severely impacted children with autism and their families in the Los Angeles and Chicago areas. Dr. Solomon is currently examining the development of the childrens' communicative abilities, the technological tools used by their families and teachers over time, and the childrens' educational progress. The goal of the project is to provide an understanding of communicative abilities of severely-impacted children with autism in naturalistic social environments, as well as to identify the practices and technological artifacts that promote the realization and development of a child's communicative potential.
Corinna E. Lathan, Ph.D.
AnthroTronix, Inc.
ITA Bridge Grant
CosmoBot™: An Interactive Robot for Children with Disabilities
AnthroTronix has developed CosmoBot™, an interactive robot designed for integrated therapy, education, and play for children with a wide range of disabilities including ASD. Grants from The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have allowed Dr. Lathan to look at developmental goals related to speech and physical therapy respectively. Subjects in the past have been recruited based on the developmental goals the child is trying to achieve, not based on their clinical diagnosis. So although they have utilized a user centered design from its inception and piloted 3 generations of robots in classrooms and clinics, they have not yet focused on the needs of children with ASD specifically. This proposal is to 1) fabricate the existing design of CosmoBot™ and 2) to evaluate its functionality with children with ASD to inform future research and impact the next generation of CosmoBot™ design.
Cheryl Y. Trepagnier, Ph.D.
The Catholic University of America
ITA Bridge Grant
Can Computer-Scorable Vectors Provide Adequately Sensitive and Specific Measures for an Objective, Instrumented, Low-Cost Method of Tracking Change in Social Reciprocity?
Impaired social interaction is a core deficit of the Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and an important target of intervention. While there are excellent tools for diagnosis, it is difficult to measure progress in social interaction. Clinicians and researchers make use of subjective parent and teacher questionnaires, laborious behavioral coding of videotapes, or equipment that may be impractical in terms of expense and acceptability to children with autism. In this project the goal of the investigators is to test the principle that location, orientation and direction of movement of the head in a structured play setting can provide important information for assessing social interaction. All of this is information that could be automatically acquired and scored by a low-cost computerized system. To test this principle, interactions will be simultaneously videotaped for behavioral coding and from overhead for coding of head location, orientation and movement direction. The data sets will be compared to assess their correlation and test-retest reliability. If the head position data correlates well with behavioral coding and proves reliable, the investigators propose development of the method in order to produce a very low-cost, reliable, objective, user-friendly measure of social interaction to improve measurement of treatment impact in clinical and research settings.
Gregory D. Abowd., D.Phil.
Georgia Institute of Technology
Technology Support for the Early Detection of Autism
Early detection of developmental delays such as autism can lead to early interventions that help individuals overcome the disability. Current screening techniques for autism are only effective for children at least as old as two years, but research suggests there are earlier signs of developmental delay. In conjunction with initiatives, such as the CDC's Learn the Signs: Act Early, we aim to produce affordable and effective solutions for proactive collection of developmental growth information from birth. Our research is aimed at collecting evidence of developmental progress in homes from birth. We will help parents to understand developmental growth of their children and to communicate that information to medical professionals more effectively. To do this, we will develop sensing and recording technologies that can be used in homes and daycare settings. We will leverage existing practices, such as the use of baby calendars, and common household items, such as baby monitors and children's toys.
Justine Cassell, Ph.D.
Northwestern University
Innovative Technology for Autism Award
Authorable Virtual Peers for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often lack the appropriate communication and reciprocal social interaction skills that lay the groundwork for academic and social achievement. However, these same children may spend hours interacting with computer games. In our previous work, we have developed a technology called virtual peers (VPs), 3D life-size animated characters that look like children and are capable of interacting, sharing real toys, and responding to children's input, and we have demonstrated that they can employ the natural activities of peer collaboration and storytelling to significantly increase children's emergent literacy and social behaviors. In the current work we propose to design and evaluate a computer system that allows children with ASD to interact with a life-size virtual peer, as well as to author interactions with that virtual peer (i.e., create and control the communication behaviors of virtual peers as a way of understanding and scaffolding their own communication and reciprocal social interaction in typical social settings). Studying the effects of the virtual peer may lead to important information about the underlying mechanisms of communication and social reciprocity in ASD, while also providing an innovative intervention for ASD.
Jessica Hodgins, Ph.D.
Carnegie Mellon University
ITA Bridge Grant
Activity Logging using Accelerometers
Logging of activities is essential for measuring the progress of children with autism and the effectiveness of new interventions. However, logging is burdensome for the therapist or parent and requires time that could otherwise be spent on activities with the child. We propose to automatically log the activities of a child using accelerometers worn on the shoes and wrist. We will use information about human motion contained in a pre-recorded and labeled database to accurately reconstruct the child's motion from low dimensional input signals (accelerations). Using this reconstruction, we will be able to create a log of labeled activities along with their duration. We envision that this log will be useful both in assessing the change induced by a particular intervention and in allowing parents or therapists to discover connections between interactions and behaviors.
Felicia D. Hurewitz, Ph.D.
University of Delaware
Innovative Technology for Autism Award
Computerized Language Training Using GrammarTrainer
This project provides efficacy testing of a computerized speech/language intervention designed for children on the autistic spectrum. GrammarTrainer (www.autism-language-therapies.com) is a linguistically informed, multi-level curriculum that systematically encourages students to produce syntactic constructions of progressively increasing complexity. We investigate the degree to which this computer assisted intervention (CAI) can remediate syntactic, morphosyntactic and pragmatic deficits in productive speech and writing. In addition, we test the efficacy and offer further development of a production-based system, where the student must fully generate responses on the computer, as compared to commonly marketed products that only require the child to receptively interpret language.
Kerry L. Marsh, Ph.D.
University of Connecticut
ITA Bridge Grant
Assessing Synchrony as a Basis for Social Connection in Autism
One important issue in autistic spectrum disorders is understanding and ameliorating sociality deficits in individuals with autism. Forming a minimal social bond with others may require responding to others at a very basic perceptual and behavioral level. That is, it may require that one has the ability and inclination to unconsciously come into synchrony with the movements of others. Social psychologist Kerry Marsh and collaborators at the University of Connecticut will use cutting-edge technologies that continuously track individuals' movements over time to examine whether individuals with autism spontaneously synchronize rocking chair movements with that of another individual. Using the tenets of human movement science, dynamical systems theory, and ecological psychology, the researchers will seek to find particular patterns of coordinated movement in autistic individuals, and they will isolate what particular processes (e.g., attentional or movement-based) might account for deficiencies that arise. Understanding the processes that generate potential deficiencies may suggest potential avenues by which researchers can redress limitations in the autistic individuals' tendencies to experience social connectedness.
Ariella Popple, Ph.D.
University of California, Berkeley
ITA Bridge Grant
Eye-Contact Training
Eye-contact is important for communication between people in our society. Studies have shown that people who make little or no eye-contact are viewed as less attractive, and are therefore less likely to be successful. Individuals with autism and Asperger's syndrome typically have problems making eye-contact. In fact, impairment in eye-to-eye gaze is a characteristic commonly used to diagnose those with autism and Asperger's syndrome. The goal of this project is to train individuals with autism and Asperger's syndrome to make more eye-contact. The technology uses 'gaze-contingent animation' to make a face presented on the computer screen smile when the observer is looking at the eyes. The faces are presented briefly, and the viewer's task is to recognize them. Studies have shown that a smile activates reward centers in the human brain. The viewer learns to make more eye-contact to associating eye-contact with this reward, although he or she may be unaware of the changes in expression or the eye-contact.
Ilene Schwartz, Ph.D.
University of Washington
ITA Bridge Grant
Automated Data Capture in Early Childhood Classrooms
Collecting accurate data and using these data to make instructional decision is an important of a high quality early intervention program for children with autism. Although special education teachers have a long history of talking about data collection and data-based decision making, data collection often gets ignored in the complex and fast-paced environment of inclusive early childhood classrooms. The purpose of this grant is to demonstrate the effectiveness of an automated data capture system in an early childhood classroom. This system is based on a system called Abaris that was developed to be used during discrete trial training (DTT) sessions with children with autism. The contextual differences between a DTT session and inclusive early childhood classrooms will require that major modifications are made to the system. The resulting system will have the potential to help improve data collection in special education classrooms and help pre-service teachers learn more about data collection and data-based decision making.
Karl Smith
Accelerations Educational Software
ITA Bridge Grant
Generalization Support Project for the DT Trainer
The DT Trainer is a software program that serves as an independent virtual tutor for children with autism. The goal of this project is to create DT Trainer features and components to facilitate the child's ability to generalize skills they learn DT Trainer and apply them to real life situations. There are three aspects of this project: 1) Create a 3D to 2D set with corresponding DT Trainer content programs. 2) Create sets of laminated images from some of the DT Trainer programs. 3) Add an image printing feature to the DT Trainer.
Patricia L. Weiss, Ph.D.
University of Haifa, Israel
ITA Bridge Grant
Enhancing Social Communication through Story-Telling Among High-Functioning Children with Autism
Children with High Functioning Autism (HFA) have the basic verbal ability for creating a story, but often lack the social understanding that is needed for such a task. Moreover, these children often prefer to play alone since they have difficulty in developing appropriate peer relationships and in interacting socially or emotionally with their peers. However, many of these children enjoy using technological devices such as computers since they provide direct and immediate feedback. We hypothesize that use of the MERL's DiamondTouch StoryTable, a very large touch screen that requires children to work together, will retain the advantages of working with a computer, yet add an important dimension, namely communication and interaction with others. In this study, the StoryTable is used with 10 pairs of boys with HFA, aged of 8-12 years who normally are associated together at school. Each pair of children will collaborate on story-telling on ten occasions over a three week period, learning how to interact with the aid of the StoryTable. We measure the children's abilities to operate the various StoryTable functions and also document their positive social interactions, negative social interactions and behaviors that are typical for children with autism. This information will enable us to determine the effectiveness of a technology-based collaboration paradigm to enhance social interaction.
Gregory Abowd, D.Phil.
Georgia Institute of Technology
ITA Award
Technology Support to Track the Effectiveness of Intervention Therapies for Children with Autism
While there are many intervention therapies proposed to help children with autism overcome their various developmental issues, there is relatively little scientific knowledge about these interventions, and many researchers declare the need for better-controlled studies. Beyond clinical evidence of effectiveness, parents and other members in the network of caregivers for autistic individuals desire the ability to communicate information regarding the ongoing progress of a child so that better-informed decisions can be made with respect to treatment. Dr. Abowd is developing a collection of automated capture technologies to assist in the collection, analysis and visualization of relevant behavioral and performance information for children with autism. He will address both structured therapies with established data collection routines, such as discrete trial training, as well as less structured observations that occur throughout the day for children with autism and help determine positive or negative trends. Dr. Abowd is interested in combining automated and manual techniques for record keeping and hope to be able to merge information extracted directly from a child with autism through wearable sensors, sensed by the environment through cameras or other means, with valuable interpretations made by human caregivers.
Yoram Bonneh, Ph.D. and Misha Tsodyks, Ph.D.
The Weizman Institute of Science
ITA Bridge Grant
Spectral Analysis of Speech in Children with Autism - a Pilot Study
The speech of many children with autism appears abnormal and often described as machine-like or monotonic. The exact nature of this abnormality and the underlying mechanisms are currently unknown, and its understanding could give hints about the non-verbal cases. At the same time, a quantitative measure of these abnormalities could be useful for diagnosis. The current study will look for abnormalities in the speech of young (ages 4-6) children with autism, investigating the frequency (spectral) content. Preliminary results revealed significant spectral differences between children with autism and controls, but a larger sample is needed to rule out artifacts. In addition, the study will look for subtypes as well as possible correlation with other autistic properties and will investigate the possibility of "spectral diagnosis."
Olga Solomon, Ph.D.
University of Southern California
ITA Bridge Grant
Ethnography of Autism Project
Ethnography of Autism is an interdisciplinary project that provides an ethnographic perspective on autism and communication. Dr. Solomon and colleagues have collected approximately 600 hours of video- and audio - data, documenting communicative abilities of 32 three to eighteen -year -old children with levels of functioning across the autism spectrum as they interacted with family members at home and with teachers and peers at school. The results of this project provided important information about the impact of autistic children's impairments on everyday communication, elaborating and often contradicting findings derived from experimental psychological studies examining similar domains of functioning in laboratory settings. These results are immediately relevant for design of successful educational programs and innovative technological devices that support the area of strength (conversational turn-taking) for children across the autism spectrum, and especially for those children who do not communicate through the use of vocal speech. To this end, the investigators have followed a cohort of severely impacted children with autism and their families in the Los Angeles and Chicago areas. Dr. Solomon is currently examining the development of the childrens' communicative abilities, the technological tools used by their families and teachers over time, and the childrens' educational progress. The goal of the project is to provide an understanding of communicative abilities of severely-impacted children with autism in naturalistic social environments, as well as to identify the practices and technological artifacts that promote the realization and development of a child's communicative potential.
Corinna E. Lathan, Ph.D.
AnthroTronix, Inc.
ITA Bridge Grant
CosmoBot™: An Interactive Robot for Children with Disabilities
AnthroTronix has developed CosmoBot™, an interactive robot designed for integrated therapy, education, and play for children with a wide range of disabilities including ASD. Grants from The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have allowed Dr. Lathan to look at developmental goals related to speech and physical therapy respectively. Subjects in the past have been recruited based on the developmental goals the child is trying to achieve, not based on their clinical diagnosis. So although they have utilized a user centered design from its inception and piloted 3 generations of robots in classrooms and clinics, they have not yet focused on the needs of children with ASD specifically. This proposal is to 1) fabricate the existing design of CosmoBot™ and 2) to evaluate its functionality with children with ASD to inform future research and impact the next generation of CosmoBot™ design.
Cheryl Y. Trepagnier, Ph.D.
The Catholic University of America
ITA Bridge Grant
Can Computer-Scorable Vectors Provide Adequately Sensitive and Specific Measures for an Objective, Instrumented, Low-Cost Method of Tracking Change in Social Reciprocity?
Impaired social interaction is a core deficit of the Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and an important target of intervention. While there are excellent tools for diagnosis, it is difficult to measure progress in social interaction. Clinicians and researchers make use of subjective parent and teacher questionnaires, laborious behavioral coding of videotapes, or equipment that may be impractical in terms of expense and acceptability to children with autism. In this project the goal of the investigators is to test the principle that location, orientation and direction of movement of the head in a structured play setting can provide important information for assessing social interaction. All of this is information that could be automatically acquired and scored by a low-cost computerized system. To test this principle, interactions will be simultaneously videotaped for behavioral coding and from overhead for coding of head location, orientation and movement direction. The data sets will be compared to assess their correlation and test-retest reliability. If the head position data correlates well with behavioral coding and proves reliable, the investigators propose development of the method in order to produce a very low-cost, reliable, objective, user-friendly measure of social interaction to improve measurement of treatment impact in clinical and research settings.
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