HiZeca: A serious game for emotions recognition

Abstract

To comprehend human behavior can be a very difficult task for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). These children have difficulties in social interaction, and they manifest repetitive patterns. Furthermore, they present deficits in imitation which can be directly linked to impairments in social interaction skills. Taking this into account, this paper presents the serious game HiZeca, in which a virtual agent (ZECA Avatar) is able to interact with a child, in order to promote social interaction and training certain facial movements that will be validated, and that will facilitate imitation and recognition of emotions (content, sad, surprised, among others). In order to validate the system, tests were conducted with typically developing children and children with ASD. The results show that, in general, the game was accepted with a positive feedback from the children.