Getting Social...With a Virtual Homo Sapien?

Getting Social...With a Virtual Homo Sapien?

By: Lindsey Elizabeth Horton

Usually autistic kids aren't very involved with the enviroment around them. They can be incredibly smart, and have talents that non-autistic people wouldn't have, but they don't socialize very much. Yet, psychologist Justine Cassell and her collegues found that there was a solution that could possibly make autistic kids more socialable.

There was an exmperiment that was done with 12 pairs of children, ranging from ages seven to eleven. In the experiment, six pairs of children were put together where there was one autistic child per pair, with another child with no developmental complications. The other six pairs were all made of children with no developmental complications also. The challenge presented to the youngsters was to use a toy castle to show a story. First, with their actual partner, then with a virtual partner. The virtual partner was a 3-D version of a child who was designed for typcial conversation and reactions for that age group. The virtual kids were also designed to be patient with their partners, pause for responses, and give feedback to their partners. 

The results? Amazing! Autistic kids actually participated in making the story, and they also took turns in conversations, as well as thought of new story ideas with their virtual partners. They did all of this much better with their virtual friends, rather than their here and now, real partners. 

Cassell suggests that further investigation should be taken into regular exposure of autistic kids to virtual friends. The centeral idea here is that the regular exsposure would build skills in the autistic children that would then transfer to real people, and real relationships with other humans. I think that the impact on society would be very influental. It is observed that autistic people often have very neat talents. If these talents were paired with socialization skills, perhaps autistic people in general, especially youth, that are fresh with new ideas on the world, could show the rest of us, who don't all have access to unique minds such as they do, new and better ways to be inventive and smart in our lives. The world could be a better place, perhaps led into a new era by a different type of thought, inspired by the social relationships with autistic people, young and old alike. This significant future would be made possible by new experiments and edge breaking technology such as the one described above. 

I choose this article because I have met autistic people, who as kind and smart as they are, usually don't socialize with me much. I would love to be able to have a very in depth conversation with them on their thoughts of the world, and on day to day things in general. Such as school, homework, and modern technology. I love the thought of using all of a brain's potential, I mean after all, I do parshily want to be a cognative scientist! I think that autistic people really have something on unlocking areas that normal people can't. Can you imagine being able to unlock that potential in yourself? I sure can! They say that we only use about a percent of our brain, and look we have accomplished! Why not got another percent?!