title: Achieving dialogue with children with severe autism in an adaptive multisensory interaction: the "MEDIAte" project.
abstract: This paper presents an adaptive physical environment that allows children with severe autism to successfully interact with multimodal stimuli, giving them a sense of control of the interaction and, hence, providing them with a sense of agency. This has been an extremely important effort for two main reasons: 1) This user group cannot be typified, hence making the design of an interactive system to fit all the spectrum of individuals a very complex task; 2) each individual PAS (Person on the Autistic Spectrum) user must be able to develop himself within the environment according to his own capacities and potentiality. Qualitative evaluation by psychologists shows very good results and sketches an encouraging future for research on these environments.
authors.affiliation: Experimentation on Interactive Communication Group, Audiovisual Institute, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Pg. Circumvallació, 8, 08003 Barcelona, Spain. npares@iua.upf.es
authors.forename: Narcís
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Parés
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Masri
authors.forename: Gerard
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: van Wolferen
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Creed
mesh_terms: D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D002648:Child; D003143:Communication Devices for People with Disabilities; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003199:Computer Systems; D003626:Data Display; D004777:Environment; D006801:Humans; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods*; D008328:Man-Machine Systems; D019212:Multimedia; D009862:Online Systems; D012677:Sensation / Q000502:physiology*; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D014159:Transducers; D014584:User-Computer Interface