Sonification

Interactive sonification, leveraging the use of appropriate sound structures to provide real-time auditory feedback, has been shown to be effective in guiding individuals with motor impairments when practising motor movements. There has, however, been little research on the use of interactive sonification in supporting motor therapeutic interventions in children with severe autism.

In this project, we explore the interactive sonification in children with autism using an existing framework, Go-with-the-flow. We investigate the effectiveness of the framework through two deployment studies using a smartphone app that is an instantiation of the framework and tracks and sonifies motor movements in real-time. The first deployment study shows children with severe autism are able to understand concepts related to interactive sonification children with severe autism can understand the concept of sonification . The second deployment study investigated which sound structures are more effective in encouraging children with severe autism to conduct repetitions of upper-limb movements and increase their ability to perform movements from an initial position to a specific target while following the right movement trajectory.