HCI Based-Shadow Teacher Mobile Application for Autistic Children

A new educational intervention has been introduced via a mobile application "The Shadow Teacher", which has been developed aiming at replacing the paraprofessional and engaging the parents in assisting their afflicted children through properly designed tasks. This study is based on 5 autistic males and 5 autistic females, with different ages from 5 to 10 years, and diseases severity ranged from level 1 mild to 3 severe. The application was designed based on parents' expectations towards their children's need as well as consultation with a professional expert. Parents were educated on how to use the application and assist their children in creating tasks coping with their children's interaction.Children improvements and progress were evaluated through a comprehensive questionnaire distributed to the parents regarding their neurological, communication, social, flexibility of thought and emotional regulation. Results were evaluated in correlation to 8 hypotheses, depicting that positive correlation occurred between the shadow teacher application and neurological deficit in correlation with communication development, social interaction, flexibility of thought and emotional regulation