AuThenTo

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are developmental disorders that make it difficult for those affected to understand information conveyed through facial expressions, gestures, and speech. This leads to difficulties in social interaction and communication. Early intervention could prevent subsequent problems, but long waiting times for therapy places delay treatment and can therefore place a burdenon those affected.

In the AuThenTo project, the project partners are developing an intervention for children with ASD in preschool and early elementary school age. A software platform with accessible mini-games is designed to enable children to discover facial expressions and forms of verbal expression in a playful way and to apply them through intrinsic motivation. By using facial expressions and language as “game controllers,” they strengthen their social skills, increase their self-confidence, and experience self-efficacy.

The project results are intended to close a gap in ASD care by making technical facial expression and speech analysis usable, bridging long waiting times, and supporting ongoing therapies.

In this project, Fraunhofer IDMT is working on the further development of automatic speech recognition in the context of autism spectrum disorder. The goal is to develop and to optimize ASD-specific acoustic and linguistic analyses in order to better analyze the speech interaction of those affected and thus support communication. The researchers in the "Assistive Speech and Language Analysis" group are placing particular emphasis on expanding the linguistic features that are central to pragmatics and interaction. 

The development of a comprehensive therapy concept and the definition of technical requirements are being carried out in close cooperation with the project partners and using a co-creation approach. The project partners intend to involve people with ASD, their relatives, and other stakeholders as co-creation partners in order to take into account their perspectives and possible solutions, as well as any concerns they may have. This cooperation is important for integrating and addressing the specific needs of people with ASD and creating innovative, sustainable solutions that help them in their everyday lives.