Affective computer-aided learning for autistic children

Autism is a mental disability that requires early intervention by educating autistic children on the everyday social, communication and reasoning skills. Computer-aided learning has recently been considered as the most successful educational method and various CAL systems have been developed. In this paper we examine the existing CAL systems and platforms and discuss the benefits of adding an affective/emotional dimension in the interaction process between the CAL system and the autistic person. We present our work on a CAL system that is based on affective avatar interaction, as well as, a personalisation database containing user profiles and records of the educational process. The system allows the educator not only to personalise the system for each user, but also to exploit records of the learning progress for further statistical analysis. Pilots and acceptability results are already on the immediate plan in a school for autistic persons.