A system to measure physiological response during social interaction in VR for children with ASD

This chapter presents work aimed at investigating interactions between virtual reality (VR) and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) using physiological sensing of affective cues. The research objectives are two-fold: 1) develop VR-based social communication tasks and integrate them into the physiological signal acquisition module to enable the capture of one's physiological responses in a time-synchronized manner during participation in the task and 2) conduct a pilot usability study to evaluate a VR-based social interaction system that induces an affective response in ASD and typically developing (TD) individuals by using a physiology-based approach. Physiological results suggest there is a different physiological response in the body in relation to the reported level of the affective states. The preliminary results from a matched pair of participants could provide valuable information about specific affect-eliciting aspects of social communication, and this feedback could drive individualized interventions that scaffold skills and improve social wellbeing.