Vallefuoco, Ersilia
(2020)
A personalised serious game to improve daily living skills in people with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
[Tesi di dottorato]
| Tipologia del documento: |
Tesi di dottorato
|
| Lingua: |
English |
| Titolo: |
A personalised serious game to improve daily living skills in people with Autism Spectrum Disorder |
| Autori: |
| Autore | Email |
|---|
| Vallefuoco, Ersilia | ersilia.vallefuoco@unina.it |
|
| Data: |
11 Marzo 2020 |
| Numero di pagine: |
147 |
| Istituzione: |
Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II |
| Dipartimento: |
Ingegneria Elettrica e delle Tecnologie dell'Informazione |
| Dottorato: |
Information technology and electrical engineering |
| Ciclo di dottorato: |
32 |
| Coordinatore del Corso di dottorato: |
| nome | email |
|---|
| Riccio, Daniele | daniele.riccio@unina.it |
|
| Tutor: |
| nome | email |
|---|
| Pepino, Alessandro | [non definito] |
|
| Data: |
11 Marzo 2020 |
| Numero di pagine: |
147 |
| Parole chiave: |
serious game; autism;simulation;rehabilitation engineering |
| Settori scientifico-disciplinari del MIUR: |
Area 09 - Ingegneria industriale e dell'informazione > ING-INF/06 - Bioingegneria elettronica e informatica |
[error in script]
[error in script]
| Depositato il: |
05 Apr 2020 14:46 |
| Ultima modifica: |
10 Nov 2021 10:00 |
| URI: |
http://www.fedoa.unina.it/id/eprint/13068 |
Abstract
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) includes a set of neurodevelopmental chronic disorders
characterised by two main categories of symptoms: deficits in social communication and
social interaction; restricted patterns of behaviours. The degree of impairment in these
two domains can change radically among individuals and ASD is often associated with
intellectual disability, psychiatric impairments, and other kinds of comorbidities, hence
the high heterogeneity in the clinical presentation of ASD. ASD symptoms appear in early
childhood but generally persist throughout life, so ASD is considered a lifelong disorder.
As shown in several studies, technology-based interventions such as serious games (SGs)
represent an innovative tool to support children and adults with ASD. Serious games
motivate the player and facilitate the learning of skills and the training of actions and
behaviours that can then be transferred to real life. However, SGs aimed at people with
ASD show several limits; in particular, SGs often fail to consider the heterogeneity of the
disorder and the different functioning profiles of individuals with ASD, they present a
restricted range of topics and genres, and above all, their assessment proves little evidence
of skill generalisation from the virtual world to real-life contexts. These limitations do not
aid the spread of serious games in rehabilitation contexts and increase the gap between
research and practice.
The aim of the present thesis is to investigate new methodologies and techniques
to improve autonomy in people with ASD through a personalised serious game. More
specifically, a rehabilitation SG-based intervention for people with ASD was carried out for
enhancing skills related to a specific daily living activity: shopping in a supermarket. The
underlying hypothesis of this study is that training with an individualised serious game
can improve the learning and generalisation of trained skills in a real-life environment.
In order to prove this hypothesis, a sample of ten subjects with ASD, aged between 8
and 16 years, played with a personalised serious game, ShopAut, for ten sessions, one
per week, for no more than 30 minutes. Before the training with ShopAut, a real-life
experience was observed to evaluate the participants’ performance in a real supermarket.
After the training with ShopAut, a second real-life experience was carried out to assess
the improvements achieved by the participants.
This study involved a multidisciplinary team, namely a biomedical engineer, a
neuropsychiatrist, a psychologist, neuro and psychomotor therapists, speech therapists, and
occupational therapists. The team planned and coordinated the rehabilitation intervention,
designed the SG analyzing the personalized elements that had to be implemented in the
game, and assessed and validated the effectiveness of the intervention.
The serious game ShopAut was developed integrating an individualised design that
provides both the personalisation of the game’s scenario, contents, difficulty, and user
interface; and the customisation of game modes, player perspectives, and input devices.
It is a three-dimensional game conceptually based on classic 3D life simulation games
and provides a realistic shopping experience where the player can practice and engage
with, above all, shopping activities, experiment their problem-solving skills, and take on
unexpected events.
For the assessment of pre- and post-training, an ad hoc form based on the International
Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health: children and youth version (ICF-CY)
was used to evaluate the participants’ functioning in the supermarket, and a clinical
standardised scale, Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale II (VABS-II), was adopted to
measure the ability of the participants to perform daily activities. Moreover, the game performances of the participants were analysed over the game sessions.
The personalised design allowed us to individualise the game experience, improving
gameplay, playability, and usability, and consequently the learning outcome. Participants
found our SG enjoyable and engaging. The results from the real-life experiences show a
significant improvement in the real-life performance of the participants, especially in the
main skills trained with ShopAut. More specifically, the training helped the participants
to maintain their attention on specific actions, to improve problem-solving and orientation
skills, and above all to enhance their ability in the shopping activity. Improvements were
also proved by positive scores on the VABS-II scales, especially in daily living skills.
Overall, the current study provides good evidence for the use of personalised SGs in
interventions for children and teens with ASD. In particular, the results suggest that
personalised SGs can effectively support rehabilitation interventions for people with ASD
to improve generalisation process and autonomy.
Downloads per month over past year
Actions (login required)
 |
Modifica documento |
