1. 4 February 2012 MOHAMMED HABASH Leeds Metropolitan University pmhabash@gmail.com GLOBAL TIMES 2012

2. Researcher: Mohammed Habash (from Edmonton, Canada) PhD student, Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds, UK Faculty of Art, Environment, and Technology Keywords: Autism, virtual environments, avatars, collaborative virtual environments, avatars, cross-cultural, rehabilitation technology, social recognition, emotions recognition in autism

3.  Exploring the Use of Cross-Cultural Parameterised “Avatars” in Virtual Learning Environments for Teaching Social Competence form People with Autism Spectrum Conditions

4.  Avatars: An avatar is a 2D or 3D graphical representation, and users can select how they wish to be represented in the VE. An avatar can look like an object, an animal or a person, which can then become an animated representation of a human. The user “inhabits” their avatar and assumes its viewpoint and can interact freely with the simulated environment via theirindividual “avatar”

5.  A virtual environment is a computer environments where users are represented by their avatars. A collaborative virtual environment is a distributed environment in which people interact and meet with their avatar representations.  The use of virtual environments (VE) and Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVE) in different fields of rehabilitation and treatment has gained strength with many values being discovered and many fields being targeted, such as mental health and phobias.

6.  Lack of emotions recognition and social competence are key features of autism spectrum conditions. Deficiency in emotion recognition leads to lack of social interaction and communication.

7. The literature suggests that there are seven “universal” emotions (Ekman, 1982) and research with adults who do not have autism suggests that they can be successfully represented via avatar faces Anger, happiness, sadness, and fear are the most commonly used expressions

8.  This study explores the impact of using cross- cultural avatars within a virtual learning environment on the recognition of emotions.  Avatars used are different from the classis white young male avatar. We present avatars in different ages, ethnicities, adult and children  Realistic and cartoon-like characters used

9.  A prima facie case for a parameterised expressive avatar and virtual environment approach is developed including an argument that there is a great value of the addition of the use of ethnicity, age, gender, and variable strengths of expressions to the expressive avatars makes participants better recognize the emotional representations of the avatars and make elicit the right selections when faced with social situations within the virtual environment.

10. Uniqueness  Bringing cross-cultural concept and looking at impact of age, ethnicity, gender on emotions recognisability in autistic children  Performed in a challenging setup:  3 rd world situation: participants in the middle-east  Technology availability to participants  Ethical sensitivity (e.g. verbal consent only available)  Participants selection (no exclusion of none high functional)  Design issues: following design guidelines for special needs and autism (Millen et. al, 2010)

11.  Participants n=18  Participants age range 3-17 years, average 11. Mental age average 7.8  Empirical work includes: baseline/pre-test, intervention, and post-test  Use of moderator/parents  Quantitative: evaluating the hypothesis, empirical data collection, statistical analysis  Qualitative: In-depth understanding of behaviours, observation, interview, self-narrative

12.  A social-context rich virtual environment is developed and involves a set of expressive avatars with cross-cultural and variant features. A preliminary empirical study involves the use of this system by eighteen participants with confirmed autism spectrum conditions diagnosis in a non-clinical setting

13.  Adapted version of the DANVA2 (THE DIAGNOSTIC ANALYSIS OF NONVERBAL ACCURACY 2), developed by Dr. Stephen Nowicki Jr. and Dr. Marshall Duke, Professors at Emory University Tests consists of 2 sections: adult and child versions -24 questions each - 4 options for each question - image offset of 2 seconds - all images have at least 80% agreement on the emotion when presented amongst neurotypical

14. CHILD ADULT

15. A social-context rich virtual environment is developed and involves a set of expressive avatars with cross-cultural and variant features.

16. MEDIATOR 3. Qualitative feedback on intervention captured by mediator, survey, observation, interview Researcher and System 4. Quantitative data on intervention captured by the system 1. Orientation and shaping of mediator’s knowledge 2. Mediator executes the session and delivers the intervention to the child TrainingTraining FeedbackFeedback 5. Feedback to mediator for improvement

17.  Empirical work is expected to be completed in May 2012. Results will be presented in follow- up papers

18.  Mohammed Habash Leeds Metropolitan University pmhabash@gmail.com