Background

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) commonly report an increased awareness of environmental sounds, abnormal loudness perception, and difficulty in filtering or “hearing out” the important auditory information in background noise.

Auditory sensory phenomena have been associated with ASD since autism was first identified in 1943. Recent studies from a UK clinical database indicate that these phenomena may be present in over 60% of individuals with ASD. Difficulties with auditory perception are clinically prominent and can be disabling especially for children, who may become distressed and unable to understand speech in a noisy classroom environment, and therefore find themselves at an educational and social disadvantage to their peers.

Although individuals with ASD and their carers frequently report auditory perception problems, they have received relatively little attention by researchers recently, especially with a view to identifying the possible underlying mechanisms. This is especially true of studies on the perception of speech in adverse acoustic environments, such as classrooms or playgrounds.

Speech-in-noise perception

We recently compared the speech communication abilities of a group of individuals with ASD and age/IQ-matched control participants, who listened to sentences presented in different types of background noises. Specifically, the signal-to-noise ratio required for 50% speech intelligibility, known as the speech reception threshold (SRT), was measured for both groups in five background noise conditions and two noise level conditions. Individuals with ASD were found to be significantly poorer at identifying key words in the sentences than the control participants, especially for background noises that contained spectral and/or amplitude modulations (i.e. frequency or temporal “dips”). In other words, they were not as good as the control participants at selectively listening for the target speech in frequency and/or temporal dips present in the background noise, a process that is sometimes called “dip listening”. The size of the SRT difference measured was between 2-4 dB, which though not numerically large, is perceptually significant and may result in as much as a 40-60% change in speech perception performance.

Frequency selectivity and temporal processing

Frequency selectivity refers to our ability to separate or “hear out” the frequency components in a complex sound, and to improve the speech-to-noise ratio (SNR). Temporal resolution refers to the ability to detect rapid changes in acoustic stimuli with time, and is a very important dimension in speech perception since speech sounds fluctuate over time, and much of the information is carried in the changes themselves. We are testing the idea that these two processes, that underlie dip listening ability, might be abnormal in ASD and might be the basis of the poorer-than-normal speech-in-noise perception abilities.

Significance

The studies underway will result in advances in the understanding of ASD by: (1) increasing the knowledge of the pathophysiology associated with autism, by specifying the mechanisms that underlie auditory processing disorders; (2) extending the current psychological theories that address the perceptual and attentional aspects of autism, by determining whether enhanced perceptual discrimination abilities underlie the local processing bias observed in ASD; and (3) establishing the importance of sensory processing in ASD, leading to a better understanding of the communication abilities of individuals with autism.

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These are the reasons for me not to  choose sound and animation. Instead do  it plain and and clean as it will be open to those who can tolerate sound and visual stimulus to the ones they can not do it.

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Important information to take into consideration for the game.

http://www.psychol.cam.ac.uk/lara/projects/vis-atten.html#visual-search

Visual attention

Background

There are many reports of differences in visual attention in autism compared to typical individuals, both experimentally and anecdotally. One frequent observation is that individuals with autism can focus excessively on certain stimuli in their environment, and that these stimuli can seem quite irrelevant to typical individuals. Another common observation is that individuals with autism show acute attention to fine detail. However, it is also frequently reported that individuals with autism can be highly distractible.

Attention to detail

Perhaps the most influential finding which highlighted the excessive attention to detail as a research question was the initial studies showing that children with autism can perform better than typical individuals on the Embedded Figures task. This requires picking out a small stimulus from a surrounding context. One possible reason for this ability that we have explored is that individuals with autism are better able to discriminate the small figure from other similar figures in the surrounding background. In order to investigate this further, we gave children with and without autism a series of visual search tasks, which required participants to search for a conjunctive target amongst distracters. We also varied how similar the target was to the distracters, and found that children with autism showed superior performance, even when the target and distracters were highly similar.

Top down attentional control

We have also used computerised visual attention tasks to assess whether the way in which information is presented can affect selective attention in children with autism. We have found that the amount of irrelevant information presented on a computer screen affects selection of relevant information in the same way for both typical children and children with autism. We have also found that like typical children, children with autism are more distracted by task irrelevant information that shares features with their current goals. These findings suggest that selective attention can be quite typical in children with autism. However, further studies have shown that selective attention performance can depend on the type of information presented.

Stimulus specific attentional differences

We have found that children with autism show typical attentional modulation of static information, but have difficulty with modulating dynamic information. For example, we found that both typical children and children with autism were more distracted by irrelevant colour distracters (static stimuli) when colour formed part of their current goals compared to when it did not. Typical children showed the same pattern for abrupt onset distracters (dynamic stimuli) whilst children with autism did not. Children with autism were only slightly distracted by stimuli with an abrupt onset, even when abrupt onset formed part of their current goals. We are currently investigating if this results from perceptual or attentional differences.

Final choices though still can be improved but so far it  is going well.

for the hands  I draw all the positions I would need to use in the character and divided in 3 the upper arm, lower arm and then the hands so just use parts to form different positions of the arm. I scanned the drawings and then retrace it in illustrator.

Again straight lines don’t work had to make it look more appealing by given it the form of a book.

Top image has too many texts. The last picture look a little boring with blue line outside. The middle picture was the solution By bringing the red line outside it makes it look more colourful and to the front. the line circles has also improved by just putting them together in twos  that united them uniformly.

I have created a series of positions for the character although I had to make some changes, like the trouser of the boy had pockets in the front and been told it looked like he had the trousers back front so I had to take the pockets out and leave it plain.

intro page

The text looks very busy for the small space of the screen lay out. decided to use only main menu and exit. I decided to use curves in order to give it more visual and dynamic as there is no much colour used

ideas for the layout of the screen

boxy

round

Two ideas for the game screen the first is too boxy. the second has curves which breaks the the stiffness of the lines given it more dynamic or movement to the layout.

Even If the game or activities are free how could it be promoted or if it is to be sell on the Internet how could it be marketed. This arise the issue of marketing and motivation as the product should appeal to people in order to use the website.

In my research of marketing I have found an useful website, according to James Robinsons the marketing email should consist of a distribution  pack which is an encrypted swf,   if it flash the game, a number of logos (in different sizes and formats) and a text file with instructions, feature list, ideal swf dimensions and other info relate to the game.

When submitting it is recommended to:

Be concise use necessary words without going into too much depth

Be professional use correct grammar and spelling

Give them everything they need to facilitate the submission of your game it should be included everything that is needed to displayed on their websites including a link to where your game is hosted to let them try it first.

Logos e.g. gif, jpg, png.

Text file; instructions of how to play the game ( interface should be intuitive enough to not need additional instructions ( short <10 and long <50 words), description of game, a search list of related key words to the game  and other information.

Give them a reason to host the game what does your game offer? What sets it apart from the crowd? Why should they host your game?

When sending the email it should be done individually rather than sending one email to them all. Psychologically it makes believe the person was meant perhaps just for him…