Emotional Self-Regulation of Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders: Smartwatches for Monitoring and Interaction
In this paper, researchers discuss the needs of persons with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) to provide a pervasive, feasible and non-stigmatizing type of emotional self-regulation assistance to ease such behavioural problems that impact their mental health during their lives. They argue that recent widespread wearables, and more specifically smartwatches, have the ability, to achieve this goal. The smartwatch framework, which applies a broad variety of self-regulation techniques and infers patterns from physiological signs and gestures, is then presented along with a mobile interface tool to be used by caregivers or family members to build and adjust these strategies in an adaptive manner. Researchers performed an intensive experiment with two people with ASD who displayed diverse, representative behavioral reactions to their relational dysfunction. Both users have been able to use efficient, personalized emotional self-regulation techniques across the system, healing from the majority of moderate stress episodes and temper tantrums encountered in the nine days of experiment in the classroom.