Enabling technology integrated learning for autistic children using augmented reality based cognitive rehabilitation

Augmented reality (AR)-based rehabilitation is an excellent teaching tool (ICT tool) for simulating daily activities for autistic children. Children with autism may become more mentally capable with this type of AR-based rehabilitation. It is intended to observe the children's performance in terms of concentration, attention, and identification. The observation has been done through placards as a target image to display the 3D objects on a mobile phone or tablet. In this project, observations are made for 21 autism children in the age group of 7–14, out of whom 17 are boys and 5 are girls. Those 21 children are given practice identifying 15 different objects in an augmented reality environment. Their performance was initially evaluated using conventional instructional techniques. The majority of the kids were having more difficulty identifying things during that observation. Then, with an Augmented Reality environment, the identical observation has been made once more. Using a mobile device or tablet, the 3D objects from the provided placard photos are produced in an augmented reality environment with animation and voice in the languages of English and Tamil. Children with autism are able to recognize and also grasp the behaviors of those objects while viewing them in 3D. Their efforts are measured using a two-point scale (0, 1, 2). The pre-assessment and post-assessment reports for the above observations are tabulated. All the observations are made in the presence of the special education teacher (therapist). However, the children observed in this project fall into three different categories: mild, moderate, and severe. In the Mild category, statistical significance is evident with p values of 0.002 in pre-assessment and 0.014 in post-assessment. Likewise, in the Moderate category, where p values are 0.023 in pre-assessment and 0.033 in post-assessment, significance is observed, as all p values fall below the chosen significance level of 0.05. This leads to rejecting the null hypothesis and concluding a significant difference. Children under the categories of mild and moderate are easily adaptable to the AR environment, and children under the category of severe are still in need of some practice in order to improve their performance.