Process Measures of Dyadic Collaborative Interaction for Social Skills Intervention in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Abstract

Technology-based social skills interventions have shown promise for people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impairments in social interaction and communication. Primary advantages of a technology-based approach to intervention relate to consistency of service delivery as well as an ability to quantitatively measure process and outcomes. Despite these strengths, however, many current computer-supported systems rely on survey data or data collected post-interaction. In response, we have developed and pilot-tested DOSE (Dyad-Operated Social Encouragement), a novel game and data acquisition platform for collaborative skills intervention that leverages the ability of software to collect time-series, speech audio, and event information for the purposes of finer-grained analyses of dyadic interactions. A pilot study involving 12 participant dyads—comprised of children with ASD and typically developing (TD) peers (6 ASD-TD dyads and 6 TD-TD dyads)—was conducted and several metrics were computed during interactions. Preliminary results suggest that the DOSE system is engaging to users, is capable of collecting a wide range of quantitative process measures, and that post-training measures show preliminary evidence of increased communication and activity coordination. Furthermore, DOSE has been made open-source, allowing other investigators to use and extend DOSE for a variety of applications.