University of Konstanz July 25th, 2013 Department of Computer and Information Science Working group on Human-Computer Interaction Bachelor Thesis in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) Encouraging Collaboration in Hybrid Therapy Games for Autistic Children First reviewer: Prof. Dr. Harald Reiterer Second reviewer: Prof. Dr. Steffen Bogen By: Sebastian Marwecki BA Information Engineering, 7th Semester Matriculation Number: 709637 Address: St.-Johann-Gasse 3, 78462 Konstanz Email: [email protected] Declaration of Authenticity I declare that all material presented to University of Konstanz is my own work, or fully and specifically acknowledged wherever adapted from other sources. I understand that if at any time it is shown that I have significantly misrepresented material presented to University of Konstanz, any degree or credits awarded to me on the basis of that material may be revoked. Constance, July 25th, 2013 ......................................................... Sebastian Marwecki I. Abstract Social competence and communicative skills of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are supported by behavioral therapy. "Serious games", especially therapeutic games on hybrid interactive surfaces, have been proven to serve as a useful tool for behavioral therapy. In this work, I describe the design process of acquiring and implementing requirements for such a hybrid therapy game: "Invasion of the Wrong Planet". I then use the game to measure collaborative behavior in two consecutive studies with 16 children without developmental disorders and 9 children with ASD at the University of Konstanz and a therapy centre in Freiburg respectively. In these studies I contrast the design principle of "Encouraged Collaboration" (ECC), which I derived from specific aspects of behavioral therapy, with the design principle of "Enforced Collaboration" (EFC), which has been used in recent work in this area of research. Based on the findings of these studies, I show that ECC in contrast to EFC leads to a higher amount of motivation, while at the same time providing a comparable amount of collaboration between the players. In this regard, ECC may enhance effectiveness of games used as a tool for behavioral therapy fostering social competence and communicative skills of children with ASD. To conclude this work I discuss how this design principle can be generalized and be applied to other fields of behavioral therapy and how effectiveness of serious games in general can be improved. 1 II. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Andreas Targan and Katharina Lilje from "Regionalverband Autismus Bodensee e.V.", Steffen Bogen from the University of Konstanz and Andreas Wacker for sharing their experiences in generating the requirements and evaluating the game, Margarita Stolarova for her tremendous help in planning and conducting the study, Roman Rädle for sharing his technical experience and scientific insights, Tobias Heimpel and all therapists at the therapy centre for autism in Freiburg for letting me evaluate the game together with their clients, Harald Reiterer for enabling this project, all proof readers of this work and every participant taking part in the study, the children from the KIND network as well as the children in Freiburg. Last, but certainly not least, my heartfelt thanks to Vladislav Syomushkin for his help in modeling of the game tokens. 2 III. Publications Parts of this work have already been published in: Marwecki et al. 2013: Marwecki, S., Rädle, R., Reiterer, H.: Encouraging Collaboration in Hybrid Therapy Games for Autistic Children. ACM Intl. Conf. Human Factors in Computing (CHI 2013), Work-In-Progress. 2013. 3 IV. Table of Contents I. Abstract ..................................................................................................................... 1 II. Acknowledgements .................................................................................................... 2 III. Publications ............................................................................................................... 3 IV. Table of Contents ....................................................................................................... 4 V. List of Figures ............................................................................................................. 6 VI. List of Tables .............................................................................................................. 8 VII. List of Abbreviations .................................................................................................. 9 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 10 1.1 Autism Spectrum Disorders ....................................................................................... 10 1.2 Therapy Games .......................................................................................................... 11 1.3 Hybrid Games ............................................................................................................ 12 2 Hybrid Therapy Games - Research Approach ............................................................ 13 2.1 Related Work ............................................................................................................. 13 2.2 Deriving the Research Question ................................................................................ 14 3 Development ........................................................................................................... 16 3.1 First Milestone ........................................................................................................... 16 3.1.1 Development Tools ............................................................................................ 16 3.1.2 Requirements and Implementation ................................................................... 17 3.2 Second Milestone ...................................................................................................... 26 3.2.1 Evaluation of the First Milestone ....................................................................... 26 3.2.2 Additional Requirements and Implementation ................................................. 26 3.3 Evaluating of the Second Milestone in a Pilot Study ................................................. 31 4 Research .................................................................................................................. 32 4.1 Study Design Overview .............................................................................................. 32 4.2 Operationalization ..................................................................................................... 33 4.2.1 Independent Variables ....................................................................................... 33 4.2.2 Dependent Variables .......................................................................................... 33 4.2.3 Hypotheses ......................................................................................................... 35 4.3 Data Collection .......................................................................................................... 35 4.4 Procedure .................................................................................................................. 38 4.5 Study with normally developed Children .................................................................. 39 4.5.1 Set-up ................................................................................................................. 39 4.5.2 Schedule ............................................................................................................. 39 4.5.3 Data Preparation ................................................................................................ 40 4.5.4 Participants ......................................................................................................... 41 4.6 Study with Autistic Children ...................................................................................... 42 4.6.1 Set-up ................................................................................................................. 42 4 4.6.2 Procedure ........................................................................................................... 43 4.6.3 Data Preparation ................................................................................................ 45 4.6.4 Participants ......................................................................................................... 45 4.7 Results ........................................................................................................................ 48 4.7.1 Result First Hypothesis ....................................................................................... 48 4.7.2 Result Second Hypothesis .................................................................................. 50 4.7.3 Additional Results ............................................................................................... 51 4.8 Discussion and Implications ....................................................................................... 59 5 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 60 5.1 Summary ...................................................................................................................