A Study of Gaze Contact Conditioning in Children with Autism Based on AR Technology

Augmented Reality (AR), which integrates virtual information with the real world, has increasingly been utilized in intervention studies for children with autism in recent years. Eye contact disorder, a prominent symptom of autism, significantly impedes social interactions. Leveraging autistic children's preference for cartoon faces, this study designed three cartoon-style face effects—animal, small-eyed character, and big-eyed character—and developed an interactive AR system to improve eye contact disorder through real-time AR interaction. The system was empirically tested on 37 autistic children. The research data showed that gaze accuracy was significantly higher with cartoon special effects than without (F = 6.8137, p < 0.05), with big-eyed cartoon characters achieving the highest accuracy, followed by animal cartoon characters (Tukey HSD test, p < 0.05). The 3D distribution analysis of eye movement data indicated that the AR special effects group had more focused gazes on the facial area. The results suggest that AR cartoon face effects significantly enhance eye contact in children with autism, with a marked preference for animal and big-eyed cartoon character faces.