Feel as Agent: Immersive Digital Dollhouse Enhances Sociality of Children with Developmental Disorders

Abstract

Children suffering with learning and developmental disorders require daily training to develop their social skills. However, such daily training is sometimes not provided because it requires interactive help from therapists, and lots of special programs required for the training. We proposed an immersive digital dollhouse that enhances traditional psychological play therapy with sensors installed, while provides feedback from the sensors to the computer graphics (CG). The immersive digital dollhouse provides an immersive space for children, which develops their communication skills through their imaginary play with the complement of CG for enhancing the understanding of their situation, and it is easy to use in their home as daily training. We conducted an experiment with a 6-year old child with a similar level as the older children with developmental disorders. We found that the number of reactions was twice as many as with a normal dollhouse, and the number of miscommunications was less than one-tenth.