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Funding boost to bring 3D dolphins closer to autistic children

SINGAPORE — Standing in a darkened room surrounded by a curved screen, Gary Oh, who has autism, interacted with images of dolphins projected in 3D while soothing music played.

Children with autism interacting with 3D dolphins. Photo: Institute For Media Innovation, NTU

Children with autism interacting with 3D dolphins. Photo: Institute For Media Innovation, NTU

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SINGAPORE — Standing in a darkened room surrounded by a curved screen, Gary Oh, who has autism, interacted with images of dolphins projected in 3D while soothing music played.

Together with 14 other youths and children with autism, Gary, then 17, spent 20 minutes each week for one year at this immersive lab at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), where they played trainer to three virtual dolphins to encouraging results — their attention spans, somatic awareness of the surrounding environment, motor skills and non-verbal communication improved.

And now, with S$700,000 in funding received this month from the Temasek Trust-funded Singapore Millennium Foundation, the researchers behind this pilot project want to explore how to scale down the cinema-like set-up so it will be more affordable and accessible for children with autism worldwide.

The Autism Resource Centre estimates that there are about 31,000 individuals with autism here and the Ministry of Health’s Child Development Programme diagnosed 610 pre-schoolers with autism spectrum disorder last year.

In their paper published in March on the project, the researchers noted that studies have shown that children with autism like technological gadgets and logical thinking, as they may possess “strong visual modality that accounts for their fascination with and propensity for learning from video and computer games”.

Another explanation is that children with autism have “high systemising ability” and may prefer mechanical and abstract systems.

Dolphin therapy, meanwhile, had recently been in the spotlight for its supposed benefits for children with autism, such as how it can improve attention span.

The project, helmed by Principal Investigator Cai Yiyu from NTU’s School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, found that the Virtual Dolphinarium was able to give the children a sense of being fully immersed in a dolphin lagoon without involving live dolphins, but the current version is costly — running on five computers.

“(It is also) not so convenient for children with autism (to come) from their school to use the facility here,” he said. “We’re going to simplify it to run on one computer or even a mobile phone.”

By the end of two years, the team hopes to have a prototype ready. It will then bring on board at least 30 children with autism to test the effectiveness of a smaller 3D Virtual Dolphinarium.

Assoc Prof Cai said the researchers also hope to study the learning differences between boys and girls with autism, and perhaps even along racial lines.

For a cheaper set-up, the team is looking at gaming options like Xbox, Kinect and Wii. They are also studying how to make the gameplay more specific to learning communication and life skills.

“Maybe we can put in verbal and facial recognition components,” said Assistant Professor Noel Chia Kok Hwee from the National Institute of Education, the project’s Co-Principal Investigator, who specialises in early childhood and special needs education.

Gary, who was taken under Asst Prof Chia’s wing in 2007, first underwent dolphin therapy in 2008 at the Dolphin Lagoon at Sentosa. Diagnosed with autism at three, Gary had always showed little interest in his surroundings, but his attention was piqued when he had the chance to interact with dolphins — both virtual and in real life at the Dolphin Lagoon.

His mother Susan Koh, 50, said she has since seen vast improvements in her son, who is now more aware of his surroundings and more alert, allowing him to work better. He is now doing vocational training at Eden Centre for Adults, and has been able to pick up skills such as packing, cleaning and gardening and get paid a small fee for his packing work.

“For instance, I try to tickle him and he tries to hide. He’s very alert now, he knows where your hand is coming from. Before this (dolphin therapy), he didn’t react to tickling at all,” she said.

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