Attention Assessment in Children with Autism Using Head Pose and Motion Parameters from Real Videos

In children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), attention assessment plays a crucial role in understanding their behavioral and cognitive functioning. Difficulties with attention are a common feature of children with autism and have a significant impact on their ability to learn and socialize. In this paper, we propose a non-invasive and objective method to assess attention in children with autism from real videos by utilizing the head poses and motion parameters. The proposed approach is an ensemble of a deep learning model that extracts head pose parameters, an optical flow approach that extracts motion parameters from consecutive frames, temporal head pose parameters extraction and an autoencoder for attention assessment. The experimental study was conducted on 39 children (ASD = 19, neurotypical children = 20) by giving different attention tasks and capturing their video using an attached webcam. Results are analyzed for participant and task differences, which demonstrate that our approach is successful in measuring a child's attention control and inattention. In particular, the assessment of the head poses and motion parameters will enable the development of real-time attention recognition systems that can be used for both learning and targeted intervention.