The lab has received a new $1.4M grant from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) to develop a new educational technology platform for teaching theory of mind and social skills to middle school students on the autism spectrum.
Maithilee Kunda is the principal investigator. This project builds on an existing educational technology called “Betty’s Brain,” developed by collaborator Gautam Biswas and his Open-Ended Learning Environments (OELE) research group. Other key collaborators include Pablo Juarez, Zack Warren, Amy Kinsman, and Amy Swanson from the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center’s Treatment and Research Institute for Autism Spectrum Disorders.
The official title of the project is: Betty’s Mind: A Theory of Mind and Social Reasoning Intervention for Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders Based on a Learning by Teaching Approach. More info can be found here: