Rolling Pins in Autism

The objective of this project is to investigate the potentialities of the Rolling Pins technology in the context of therapeutic interventions with autistic children. A Rolling Pin (RP) consists of a semi-trans¬parent plastic tube. The RPs are capable of measuring their orientation and the speed of their rotation to activate a visual (colour modification), tactile (vibration) or auditory feedback. The peculiarity of the RPs is that they are able to communicate with each other. The RPs are used in pairs, since the local feedback of each RP can be dynamically set depending not only on its own speed and orientation, but also on the speed and the orientation of the peer RP. The RPs were specifically designed to support social relationships between the therapist and the patient, providing them with the opportunity to establish a dialogue based on visual, aural, tactile and sensory-motor interaction modalities. For this study, a specific software configuration has been defined: the manipulation of a Rolling Pin produces a feedback (visual and aural) only in the other one and vice-versa. Our hypothesis is that this configuration should encourage the child and the therapist to play together and cooperate in order to obtain a sensory reward. A field study has been set up in order to observe and describe the role of RPs in contributing to the emergence of the following behavioural responses: imitation, turn-taking, children request for interaction, joint attention and generation of novel sensory-motor patterns.