Eye-Contact Game Using Mixed Reality for the Treatment of Children With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Many children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) perform poorly in their academic studies. They also have difficulties in their social lives due to a lack of interpersonal skills and this often continues into adult life. Appropriate early therapies and medications can be very beneficial. In this paper, we introduce and demonstrate the benefits of a new type of treatment, namely, an eye-contact game which successfully exploits mixed reality technology. None of the patients in our experiment were older than ten years of age. They were able to pay attention and sustain interest in the treatment sessions over a span of six weeks. After participating in the treatment sessions with our game, the omission/commission errors which were evaluated in an attention test taken by the experimental group decreased significantly and appeared within the normal range. In addition to the improvement in error rates, the mean response time to an interactive metronome test significantly decreased. Importantly, our game allows patients to conduct this treatment by themselves at home without professional assistance. To the best of our knowledge, this study is one of the first studies to use a mixed reality head-mounted display to treat children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and to prove its potential as a treatment for clinically diagnosed children.