Andrea Tartaro

I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Technology and Social Behavior joint Ph.D. program in computer science and communication studies at Northwestern University. I work with Dr. Justine Cassell in the ArticuLab and the Center for Technology and Social Behavior.

Research

My research explores developing innovative technology tools for children with special needs to help them access social and learning opportunities. In particular, my dissertation research involves designing, building and evaluating a new kind of "authorable" virtual peer that will allow children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) to learn about social interaction with peers by building their own virtual humans and observing how they interact with people. A virtual peer is a life-sized, computer-animated character that looks like a child and interacts with children using both speech and gestures. The authorable virtual peer will offer children with ASD a space to play with social communication, social interaction and imagination � skills that come naturally to typically-developing children, but are the most challenging for children with autism. This research employs new methods in Human-Computer Interaction for designing and implementing interactive virtual characters, and improves our understanding of the educational and communication needs of children with ASD.

Projects

Authorable Virtual Peers for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Children with autism, and related pervasive developmental disorders, can lack the appropriate communication skills, social skills, and behaviors such as imaginative play that form a foundation for learning. Our goal is to create a new "authorable" virtual peer that will leverage the benefits of peer interaction and narrative to help children with autism develop social skills. This new system will enable children with autism to interact with a virtual peer, and also then create and control the communication behaviors of virtual peers as a way of scaffolding social interaction and language skills with people.

Neural Basis of Social Perception of a Human versus Virtual Human

Are virtual humans socially understood as human? In a collaborative project with Dr. Joan Chiao and the Social and Cultural Neuroscience Lab, we are using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure the neural correlates of perception and social evaluation of two types of agents: an Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA or virtual human) and a real human.

Collaborative Storytelling with a Virtual Peer

This project investigates the potential of a virtual peer to engage in collaborative storytelling by modeling roles, speech acts and turn-taking behaviors that children use during improvisational play. We are investigating aspects of engagement and educational potential of the collaborative system.

Education

Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, M.S. in Computer Science, June 2005
Columbia University, Teachers College, New York, NY, M.A. in Instructional Technology, May 2003
Brown University, Providence, RI, B.A. in Computer Science, May 1999

Relevant Publications

Tartaro, A. & Cassell, J. (2008). Playing with Virtual Peers: Bootstrapping Contingent Discourse in Children with Autism. International Conference of the Learning Science. Utrecht, the Netherlands. ACM Press. pdf

Merryman, J., Tartaro, A., Arie, M. & Cassell, J. (2008). Designing Virtual Peers for Assessment and Intervention for Children with Autism. Workshop on Designing for Children with Special Needs at the Conference on Interaction Design and Children. Evanston, IL. ACM Press. pdf

Cassell, J., & Tartaro, A. (2007). Intersubjectivity in Human-Agent Interaction. Interaction Studies 8 (3): 391-410.

Tartaro, A. (2007). Autorable Virtual Peers for Children with Autism. Doctoral Consortium Presentation at Human Factors in Computer Systems (CHI2007), Extended Abstracts. 16% acceptance rate. pdf

Tartaro, A. & Cassell, J. (2007). Using Virtual Peer Technology as an Intervention for Children with Autism. In J. Lazar (Ed.), Towards Universal Usability: Designing Computer Interfaces for Diverse User Populations. Chichester, UK: John Wiley and Sons.

Cassell, J., Tartaro, A., Rankin, Y. & Oza, V., & Tse, C. (2007). Virtual Peers for Literacy Learning. Educational Technology, Special Issue on Pedagogical Agents, XLVII, 39-43. pdf

Tartaro, A. & Cassell, J. (2006). Authorable Virtual Peers for Autism Spectrum Disorders. Paper presented at the Combined Workshop on Language-Enabled Educational Technology and Development and Evaluation of Robust Spoken Dialogue Systems at the 17th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI06), Riva del Garda, Italy. pdf

Tartaro, A. (2005). Storytelling with a Virtual Peer as an Intervention for Children with Autism: Assets Doctoral Consortium. Paper presented at Assets: The Seventh International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, Baltimore, MD. Best Doctoral Candidate Award. pdf

Classes

TA, Spring 2007, Understanding Technology and Human Interaction, Professor Darren Gergle
TA, Winter 2006, Children's Culture, Professor Justine Cassell
TA, Winter 2005, Children's Culture, Professor Justine Cassell

Stuff

Bucky and Bill
HAVE Dreams
Team in Training
Big City Swing

The pictures above are of Lipari, Italy, the island where my father was born, from our family trip in June, 2006.

andrea at cs dot northwestern dot edu
Northwestern University * Center for Technology and Social Behavior * 2240 Campus Drive, 2-431 * Evanston, IL 60208

Last modified: September 2, 2008.