Professor David Brown

Talk: Emotion AI-driven technologies and application to learning, health and wellbeing

This presentation will cover the case for applying Emotion AI-driven technologies with students with Intellectual Disabilities and Autism, where schools are receiving more diverse students in their classrooms requiring diverse teaching. Approaches that address the real issue of teachers not having enough capacity to attend to each child’s individual learning needs, or to support their best behavioural outcomes in class are called for, to ensure that all students are supported to develop their full academic and social potential. Recent research at NTU in using Emotion AI-driven technologies within immersive environments as an exposure therapy whereby students are encouraged to control their own gradual exposure to virtual threat will also be covered. Recognising that contemporary screening tools to measure cognitive decline in neurotypical populations are often not suitable for those with Intellectual Disabilities, the final project reviewed in this talk proposes the development of a virtual triangle completion task to assess spatial navigation involving path integration without visual cues as an alternative, more ecologically valid computer-based test. This platform will use both task-related errors and an analysis of electroencephalogram time series data (potentially from the retrosplenial cortex) in the development of a generalised model that could be used to indicate early cognitive decline in populations that are genetically predisposed to experience Alzheimer’s disease at a relatively early life stage. A central theme running throughout these research studies is approaches to using eXplainable AI (XAI) and the reasons for pursuing such methods considering the vulnerabilities of the communities we work with.

Professor David Brown is Chair of the International Conference on Disability, Virtual Reality and Associated Technology. He is both a Principal and Co-Investigator on a range of European and UKRI projects investigating the role of multimodal affect recognition to promote engagement in learning and positive mental wellbeing for students with Intellectual Disabilities and Autism. He is Associate Editor for Frontiers: Virtual Reality in Medicine, Leads the Interactive Systems Research Group (ISRG), Directs the Computing and Informatics Research Centre (CIRC) and has a lifelong obsession with the late, great musician – Janis Joplin.