FaceMe: An Augmented Reality Social Agent Game for Facilitating Children's Learning about Emotional Expressions

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience dysfunctional emotional development leading to negative effects on their social communication. Although interventions are effective in helping children with ASD improve their social skills over time, they have been found to lack the essential ability to engage children in a real social environment. In this paper, we present "FaceMe," which is an augmented reality (AR) system that uses a virtual agent and a set of tangible toolkits to teach children with ASD about six basic emotions and improve their emotional and communication skills. On the basis of the pilot data, the results suggest that children, especially those with ASD, were willing to socialize with the virtual agent and understand more emotional states. It is hoped that FaceMe can be used as a tool to provide assistance to children with ASD, as well as a way for future interface system design to support emotional development in children.