Certain investigations to improve communication and recognize emotion for the autistic children

Abstract

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neuro developmental disorder. The children affected with autism lack in areas like socialization, communication and imagination. Symptoms of autism start to show up during the first three years of life. Most of the autistic children have problem in communicating which hinders the learning abilities in them. There are many therapies that help the autistic children to behave like a normal child and to help the parents in managing the child s behaviour. Therapies based on the principles of Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) are used to teach new skills to the autistic children and encourage appropriate behaviour. These children have trouble in understanding or conveying their own emotions. The aim of this research work is to develop a system that helps the autistic children to communicate with others and also to recognize the emotion of these children. peech language pathologist helps the autistic children to improve their communication and the common method used is Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS), in which the words are taught with the help of cards with pictures. An interactive system is proposed using electronic gadgets to help the autistic children in improving or initializing their communication and thus making them to convey their needs easily. Since the autistic kids are interested in using electronic gadgets, a human computer interface is created to find out their needs and also to improve or stimulate their communication. The system has been customized based on the individual needs, which has the pictures of various items. Once the picture is touched, the system delivers an audio output which sounds the name of the picture. Then the child tries to repeat the audio output of desired object. newline