Gamifying Autism diagnosis and treatment

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By Katharine Miller

In the game Guess What? created by Stanford researchers, an adult caregiver holds a smartphone to his or her forehead and asks a child to mimic an image displayed on the screen. It might be a monkey, a soccer player, or perhaps a happy or sad face. The adult then guesses what the child is acting out and registers correct answers by tilting the phone forward; incorrect by tilting it back.

For children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the game provides a quick dose of therapeutic learning in the home setting – helping them make eye contact with their caregivers as well as helping them associate specific emotions with various facial expressions.

But the value of Guess What? goes much deeper. Each 90-second game session is video recorded and can be submitted (with appropriate consents and privacy protections) to Stanford researchers.

“If we switch the camera on, and we can give useful prompts to the child, we can challenge them, help them, and capture information as we go,” says Dennis Wall, professor of pediatrics, of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, and of biomedical data science at Stanford Medicine and an affiliated faculty member with the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.

For a few years now, Wall and his colleagues have been gathering Guess What? home video recordings and using them to develop new ways to diagnose ASD remotely, improve emotion-recognition datasets, track children’s progress recognizing emotions, and ultimately improve ASD treatments.