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  The Sensory Accommodation Framework for Technology: Bridging Sensory Processing to Social Cognition

  LouAnne Boyd

  This book provides a thorough introduction to the many facets of designing technologies for autism, with a particular focus on optimizing visual attention frameworks. This book is designed to provide a detailed overview of several aspects of technology for autism. Each Chapter illustrates different parts of the Sensory Accommodation Framework and provides examples of relevant available technologies. The books first discusses a variety of skills that make up human development as well as a history of autism as a diagnosis and the birth of the neurodiversity movement. It goes on to detail individual types of therapy and how they interact with autism. The systems involved in sensory processing and their specific relation to autism are then explored, including through technologies that have addressed these areas and applications for designers. Readers will learn about designing sensory environments and sensory interactions, such as through virtual reality. This book places a needed emphasis on the hierarchy of information in technology development by exploring visual attention in neurodivergent conditions like autism, ADHD, and dyslexia. It also delves into the relationship between sensory perception and nonverbal communication, the bridge between sensory input and social behavior, and dynamic information. The discussion is rounded out with examinations of temporal processing as and multisensory integration as complicating factors that have existing technological solutions. Finally, the book closes with a summary of the sensory accommodation framework in respect to how each layer offers different user experience goals and specific mechanisms to promote those goals. Readers from a variety of research backgrounds will find this book informative and useful, while designers will learn essential skills for effectively designing autism technologies.

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  An Application of Neural Embedding Models for Representing Artistic Periods

  Rao Hamza Ali, Katie Rhodeghiero, Alexa Zuch, Saniya Syed, and Erik Linstead

  We showcase visualizations created for art periods of Dalí, van Gogh, and Picasso by leveraging deep neural embedding models like word2vec to represent color features. First, the embedding vectors are generated for every color used in artworks of these painters. Next, t-distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE) is applied to generate a two-dimensional visualizations of the color space. Colors used in close proximity on the canvas are observed as compact clusters in the visualizations. These visualizations are termed as fingerprints, as they uniquely depict each art period of a painter, by highlighting the color palette used in their works. The authors further provide commentary on the artists’ art periods and how the fingerprints showcase their artistic evolution.