Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a complex neurological disorder that typically appears before the age of three and immediately and profoundly affects a young child's ability to communicate, develop language, form social relationships and respond appropriately to environmental cues. Behavioral intervention is a consensus best practice scientific treatment methodology derived from the field of Applied Behavior Analysis, that focuses on providing rigorous and sustained one-to-one and natural-context treatment to teach developmental skills such as attending, imitation, receptive language, expressive language, pre-academic social and self-help skills. BI-based teaching interventions are highly structured, and they typically employ a number of procedures to begin teaching critical developmental prerequisite skills related to language, motor and discrimination training. These include Discrete-Trial Training, Shaping, Fading, Chaining, Differential Reinforcement, and other methodologies, all used by practitioners to foster learning. This project will develop a simulated interactive virtual child as a teaching tool for teachers and practitioners who are learning complex behavioral training procedures. For this Phase-1 project we will focus our effort on teaching ?Discrete-Trial Training,? as a means of testing the feasibility of the product, in preparation for a Phase-II submission. The project has two major objectives: (1) to design and develop a prototype of the product and (2) to evaluate the effectiveness of the prototype.
The proposed project and the resulting product will directly benefit individuals who provide behavioral intervention services to children with autism spectrum disorders and other developmental disabilities. The project has two major objectives: The project has two major objectives: (1) to design and develop a simulated interactive virtual child as a teaching tool for teachers and practitioners who are learning complex behavioral training procedures and (2) to evaluate the effectiveness of the product.
