Available Projects
Combining brain and behaviour measures for children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder
Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are - to varying levels - resistant to examination, most certainly in the clinic but equally in the home. Getting a glimpse into the mind of children with ASD would be most useful for clinicians charge with their treatment. This project concerns the development of handheld toy, to be used to engage with, and extract data from, children with ASD in the home.
Primary supervisor: Professor Christopher James - Email: c.james@warwick.ac.uk
Project detail:
There are many instances in the literature where using a toy (usually a soft "cuddly" toy) is useful in engaging with children, this also holds true for children with some level of Intellectual Disability - including children with ASD. Using such a toy can have both a calming effect in itself, but also provides an opportunity to measure interaction of the child with the toy in play.
This project looks at the development of an instrumented soft toy that could be used to interact with children with ASD such that a set of measured of behaviour can be extracted through said interactions. This will take place in multiple levels - at the most basic level the toy will measure physical interaction with the toy, using measures such as accellerometry. Other measures though also include the use of a microphone to assess verbal interaction. At the next level, the toy will allow for both spontaneous and pre-programmed responses as well as vitro-tactile responses - these could be used to initiate interaction between child and toy. Finally - the toy can be be given meta-parameters that measure the toy's level of "hunger", "happiness", "tiredness", etc. These latter can be used to assess emotional engagement of the child with the toy.
The toy thus provides a small eco-system of parameters that can be used to engage with the child and measure this interaction over time. This could help the clinicians in assessing general well-being at the most minimal level.
The project will also look at incorporating wearable EEG in the home, mixing the long term measures extracted from the toy interaction to a series of shorter-term neural assessments through more standard EEG measures. This latter phase will be used as a means of obtaining neurophysiological markers of the child's mental state and will only be undertaken after successful interaction with the toy has been achieved.
The University of Warwick provides an inclusive working and learning environment, recognising and respecting every individual’s differences. We welcome applications from individuals who identify with any of the protected characteristics defined by the Equality Act 2010.