Using Augmented Reality to Help Children with Autism Stay Focused

Children with autism have difficulty sustaining their selective attention during therapy sessions. Attention management techniques involve the use of verbal and visual prompting, annotated on top of the physical objects used during therapies. Here, the authors explore how augmented reality helps integrate the physical and digital worlds, mimicking current strategies for attention management in autism. They describe their design decisions when developing the Mobile Object Identification System (Mobis), a mobile augmented reality application that lets teachers superimpose digital content on top of physical objects. The results of a five-week deployment study demonstrate that Mobis is useful and easy to use, increases the sustained and selective attention of children with autism, and elicits positive emotions during therapies. This article is part of a special issue on managing attention. © 2002-2012 IEEE.