Sensing Interpersonal Synchrony between Actors and Autistic Children in Theatre Using Wrist-worn Accelerometers

Ward, Jamie A; Richardson, Daniel C.; Orgs, Guido; Hunter, Kelly and Hamilton, Antonia. 2018. 'Sensing Interpersonal Synchrony between Actors and Autistic Children in Theatre Using Wrist-worn Accelerometers'. In: International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC). Singapore, Singapore 8-12 October 2018. [Conference or Workshop Item]

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Abstract or Description

We introduce a method of using wrist-worn accelerometers to measure non-verbal social coordination within a group that includes autistic children. Our goal was to record and chart the children’s social engagement – measured using interpersonal movement synchrony – as they took part in a theatrical work- shop that was specifically designed to enhance their social skills. Interpersonal synchrony, an important factor of social engagement that is known to be impaired in autism, is cal- culated using a cross-wavelet similarity comparison between participants’ movement data. We evaluate the feasibility of the approach over 3 live performances, each lasting 2 hours, using 6 actors and a total of 10 autistic children. We show that by visualising each child’s engagement over the course of a performance, it is possible to highlight subtle moments of social coordination that might otherwise be lost when review- ing video footage alone. This is important because it points the way to a new method for people who work with autistic children to be able to monitor the development of those in their care, and to adapt their therapeutic activities accordingly.

Item Type:

Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1145/3267242.3267263

Keywords:

computer systems organization, embedded systems, redundancy, robotics, networks, network reliability, wearable sensing, accelerometers, theatre, autism, interpersonal synchrony, wavelets

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Psychology

Dates:

DateEvent
8 October 2018Published
7 June 2018Accepted

Event Location:

Singapore, Singapore

Date range:

8-12 October 2018

Item ID:

24390

Date Deposited:

10 Oct 2018 09:43

Last Modified:

11 Jun 2021 19:16

URI:

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/24390

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