Therapuetic versus Prosthetic Technologies in Autism Therapuetic versus Prosthetic Assistive Technologies: the Case of Autism

Assistive technologies can be divided into two broad categories: therapeutic and prosthetic. Therapeutic tools aim to help an individual deal with a disabilityor particular deficiency through teaching and intervention programmes. Prosthetic assistive technologies, on the other hand, supplement or replace natural abilities in which a person may have a disability. In this paper, we consider these two alternative approaches to rehabilitation for the case of autism. Autism is a spectrum of neuro-developmental disorders that is manifested in a triad of impairments: social interaction, communication, and repetitive behaviour or obsessive interests. The majority of assistive technologies for autism fall in the category of therapeutic. The lack of prosthetic technologies may be largely attributed to the fact that, to date, computers lack social and emotional intelligence, which are the skills that people diagnosed with autism need help with the most. We argue that the principal problem with therapeutic tools, namely the failure to generalize to real-world scenarios, provides the motivation for pursuing prosthetic technologies for autism. We summarize advances in two key technology areas, affective computing and wearable computing, which make the vision of prosthetic tools for autism a reality. In light of these advances, we present our own attempt at developing a prosthetic tool for autism: the emotional hearing aid. We conclude with a discussion of open questions that warrant future discussions and research.