Multimodal Conversational Agents
for People with Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Overview

Neurodevelopmental Disorders (NDD) are a group of conditions with onset in the developmental period characterized by deficits in cognitive, social, and communication areas [1]. NDD includes intellectual developmental disorder, global developmental delay, communication disorders, autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), neurodevelopmental motor disorders, and specific learning disorders [1]. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in utilizing conversational agents - i.e., software enabling access to information and services through voice [2] - as a means of providing therapeutic interventions for individuals with NDD [3]. Multimodality (i.e., the variety of input and output types beyond the voice associated with specific interaction with an agent [4]) is one of the key factors driving the success of conversational agents for people with NDD [3]. This may be because conversational interaction empowered by multimodality is generally perceived as safe and straightforward by people with NDD. Despite the recent hype in the community, there is generally limited knowledge about the usability, effectiveness, and perception of conversational agents for people with NDD, given their broad spectrum of special needs to be addressed and the very multidisciplinary aspects to consider when designing and evaluating conversational agents for this target population [3]. Consequently, numerous questions and challenges related to the design, development, and evaluation of conversational agents for people with NDD remain unanswered.

This workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners in the field of multimodal conversational agents for individuals with NDD, with the goal of fostering a multidisciplinary discourse on the latest research, technologies, and applications in the field. The workshop will provide a stage for participants to share their findings, exchange ideas, and identify future research directions. Key themes that will be addressed during the workshop include, but are not limited to, the design and development of multimodal conversational agents for individuals with NDD, evaluating the effectiveness of these systems in real-world settings, understanding the specific needs of individuals with NDD and tailoring the systems accordingly, the use of virtual reality and artificial intelligence in the development of these systems, voice analysis and perception, and the social and ethical implications of using these systems.

References

[1] American Psychiatric Association, (2013), Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.), https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425596;

[2] Følstad, A. et al., (2021), Future directions for chatbot research: an interdisciplinary research agenda, Computing, 103(12), pp.2915-2942, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00607-021-01016-7; 

[3] Catania, F., Spitale, M., & Garzotto, F. (2022), Conversational agents in therapeutic interventions for neurodevelopmental disorders: a survey, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), https://doi.org/10.1145/3564269;

[4] Karray, F. et al, (2008). Human-computer interaction: Overview on state of the art. International journal on smart sensing and intelligent systems, 1(1), 137-159, https://doi.org/10.21307/ijssis-2017-283;