Resent psychological studies have revealed that autistic children
can neither reason properly about mental states of themselves and others nor
understand emotions. Autism is a multifactor disorder that is characterized by
impaired social interaction and communication, combined with repetitive and
stereotyped patterns of behavior, and affects up to 1% of school-aged children
in some geographic areas. In this proposal we are concerned with the strategies
of rehabilitation of reasoning to improve communication skills of children with
autism.
It has been confirmed
by multiple clinical studies that the properly timed treatment is essential for
the autistic patient to increase the chance for recovery. An early behavioural
intervention is highly beneficial for autistic children. There is an opinion
with increasing support by multiple researchers that intensive behavioural
intervention may result in a dramatic improvement of communication skills of
children with autism. A majority of autism experts believe that there is no
alternative to behavioural intervention thought as the only way to facilitate
compensatory learning. Teaching proper reasoning about mental states is one of
the essential components of behavioural intervention, in accordance to the
Theory of Mind, which is quite popular today.
Multiple technologies have
been suggested to support autistic learning, including software and hardware
system developing particular behaviour patterns. However, a general framework
of reasoning rehabilitation with explicit orientation to the mental world is
currently unavailable for most autistic patients. A majority of current
software tools does not directly cure the reasoning and decision–makings skills
for living among humans with intentions and beliefs. Instead, they teach
certain forms of behaviour without explaining their simplest components, the
basic mental actions and mental states, which are easily perceived and
understood by normal children.
We propose to develop
from existing prototypes and integrate a set of intelligent software tools with
the clear focus: operating with mental attitudes. Over last seven years we have
deployed a variety of means to enforce a patient attention to the limited set
of mental entities, including the basic (want-believe-know) and derived
(pretend, deceive, offend, forgive, ask, answer, etc.). The next step for the
reasoning rehabilitation software we are currently proposing is to demonstrate
that this limited set of entities allows describing the major part of mental
world. Having acquired the skills of operating with these entities (which is
indeed reasoning), an autistic patient becomes capable of understanding
themselves and others, as our studies have demonstrated. We have also verified that the learners can
apply the acquired patterns of mental entities to real-world scenarios.
Various modes of interactions with a
trainee should be employed in software components. Keeping attention of
autistic patients by its intelligent behaviour, the system will be able to
predict what will happen with agents (their future mental states), given an
initial mental state specified by the patient. The system will also be capable
of understanding children’s questions about mental states of characters of a
scene or of a short story. Moreover, the system will ask questions to children
concerning these characters and analyse their answers. In addition, there is an
existing tool where children "build up" the definitions of above
mental entities; it has been proven to be efficient but should be implemented
online.
Various ways of specifying mental
states are helpful in developing the skills to operate with the mental
entities. Typing words into an interactive form, selecting appropriate mental
entities from a list box, outlining a meaning of a given mental entity via a
set of list boxes – all these exercises assist the children with autism in
their adaptation to mental world.
The main beneficiaries of this project
are children with autism who are capable of using computers, and their parents. Usually
even pre-verbal autistic children are strongly attracted to computers. It is
important, however, that autistic children are occupied with exercises with
clear focus on development of a particular skill rather than an arbitrary game.
It is well-known that autistic children can develop a strong interest to a
particular domain which may not be of interest to a majority of others. The
task of rehabilitation software is therefore to transfer a passion of autistic
trainee to developing creative skills which would be appreciated by others,
including the cabability o freasoning about mental world.
The software is
intended for a wide audience of trainees with communication problems, or those
who intent to develop their communication skills further. Currently, the
difficulty of exercises can be significantly varied, from very basic to those
which require operation with quite complex mental states. We propose to develop
the online version with integrated tools targeting children from 6 years old to
adults up to 16 years old; for autistic children the respective mental age
range is assumed.
The software to be develop will benefits a wide
spectrum of children: from preschoolers to teenagers, from classically
autistic to Asperger's Syndrome. Children with intellectual disabilities (like Autism, Down
syndrome, Pervasive Developmental Disorders, developmental delay) are targeted
as well.