Statistics show the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a developmental delay disorder, is now 1 in 110 children in the United States (Rice, 2009), nearing 1% of the population. Therefore, this study looked at ways modern technology could assist these children and their families. One deficit in ASD is the inability to respond to gaze referencing (i.e. follow the eye gaze of another adult/child/etc), a correlate of the responding to joint attention (RJA) process. This not only affects the way they appear to society, but it also affects social development, communication skills, and play skills later in life (Whalen & Schreibman, 2003), making early intervention of RJA is an integral part of a successful social skills program. This study developed design guidelines, as well as offered and evaluated a design framework, adding to the limited literature regarding technology and ASD intervention. The game was developed within behavior analytic framework, undergoing several iterations, developing a functional prototype that was analyzed in three parts. The first part identified which elements needed redesign in light of the study population. Second, a collaborative prototyping participatory design group was formed in which the elements from the previous part of the study were assigned guidelines. The final part of the study included an evaluation by those with ABA experience, evaluating if the game correctly encompassed and mirrored traditional face-to-face ABA interventions. The study's contributions were the finalized design guidelines and design framework, as well as additional research on harnessing technology in ASD interventions. / Master of Science

Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) and Massively Multi-player On- line Games (MMOGs) are a popular, immersive genre of computer game. For some disabled users, eye-gaze offers the only input modality with the potential for sufficiently high bandwidth to support the range of time-critical interaction tasks required to play. Although, there has been much research into gaze interaction techniques for computer interaction over the past twenty years, much of this has focused on 2D desktop application control. There has been some work that investigates the use of gaze interaction as an additional input device for gaming but very little on using gaze on its own. Further, configuration of these techniques usually requires expert knowledge often beyond the capabilities of a parent, carer or support worker. The work presented in this thesis addresses these issues by the investigation of novel gaze-only interaction techniques. These are to enable at least a beginner level of game play to take place together with a means of adapting the techniques to suit an individual. To achieve this, a collection of novel gaze based interaction techniques have been evaluated through empirical studies. These have been encompassed within an extensible software architecture that has been made available for free download. Further, a metric of reliability is developed that when used as a measure within a specially designed diagnostic test, allows the interaction technique to be adapted to suit an individual. Methods of selecting interaction techniques based upon game task are also explored and a novel methodology based on expert task analysis is developed to aid selection.

Det finns forskare som menar att medierna är med och skapar vår identitet, därför måste vi ställa oss kritiska till de bilder vi ser. Enligt Gillian Rose ska vi med noggrannhet granska de bilder som exempelvis ett omslag har, för där det finns vissa kriterier vi måste ta hänsyn till. Syftet med min studie är att med semiotiska och retoriska verktyg analysera Elle, Plaza Kvinna, GQ samt King’s omslag för att se om män och kvinnor gestaltas olika beroende på vilken publiken är. Samt om det finns en skillnad tidningarna emellan. Med hjälp av Yvonne Hirdmans genusteori, Erwing Goffmans teori om avkodningen på bilden samt Laura Mulveys begrepp ”the male gaze” såg jag hur omslagen med en manlig publik gestaltade både män och kvinnor på sina omslag. Samt att de omslagen som inriktade sig till kvinnlig publik endast gestaltade kvinnor. Av de fyra modemagasinen som jag valde att analysera så anspelade tre av dem på kända personers trovärdighet istället för att låta kläder eller skönhet tala. Ord som blev centrala i analysernas konnotativa del var bland annat självständighet, makt, elegans och fullständighet. / There are scientists who believe that the media are creating human’s identity, therefore we need to be critical to the images we see. According to Gillian Rose we must view the cover pictures carefully with several criteria to take into consideration. The purpose with this study is to analyze Elle, Plaza Kvinna, GQ and King’s covers to see if men and women are portrayed differently depending on who’s looking. With the help of semiotic and rhetorical tools I saw a difference to how the genders were portrayed. The theoretical position I have taken is gender theory by Yvonne Hirdman, the theory Erwing Goffman presents in his work Media Advertisement where he talks about the decoding of a picture and Laura Mulveys concept of” the male gaze”. In the material, I saw that a different was made between male and females. The magazines that had a male audience portrayed both men and woman on their covers. And the magazines that has a female audience portrayed woman only. Of the four- fashion magazine three of them focused on the credibility of the model instead of letting the fashion speak.

Background Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have been reported to show socio-communicative impairments which are associated with impaired face perception and atypical gaze behaviour. Attending to faces and interpreting the important socio-communicative cues presented allows us to understand other’s cognitive states, emotions, wants and desires. This information enables successful social encounters and interactions to take place. Children with ASD not attending to these important social cues on the face may cause some of the socio-communicative impairments observed within this population. Examining how children with ASD attend to faces will enhance our understanding of their communicative impairments. Aim The present thesis therefore aimed to use eye-tracking methodology to examine attention allocation to faces for communicative cues in children with ASD. Method The first line of enquiry examined how children with ASD (n = 21; age = 13y7m) attended to faces presented within their picture communication systems compared to typically developing children matched on chronological age, verbal ability age and visuo-spatial ability age. The next investigation was conducted on the same group of children and examined how children with ASD attended to faces of different familiarity including, familiar, unfamiliar and the child’s own face. These faces were also presented with direct gaze or averted gaze to investigate how this would impact on the children’s allocation of attention. The final exploration highlighted how children with ASD (n = 20; age = 12y3m) attended to socially salient information (faces) and non-socially salient information (objects) presented within social scenes of varying complexity, compared to typically developing controls. Again groups were matched based on chronological age, verbal ability age, and visuo-spatial ability age. Results Children with ASD were shown to allocate attention to faces presented within their picture communication symbols similarly compared to their typically developing counterparts. All children were shown to fixate significantly longer on the face images compared to the object images. The children with ASD fixated for similar amounts of time to the eye and mouth regions regardless of familiarity and gaze direction compared to their controlled matches. All groups looked significantly longer at the eye areas compared to the mouth areas of the faces across all familiarity types. The children also fixated longer on the eye and mouth regions of direct gazing faces compared to the regions presented on the averted gazing faces. The children with ASD fixated on the faces and objects presented within social scenes similar to their typically developing counterparts across all complexity conditions. The children were shown to fixate significantly longer on the objects compared to the faces. Conclusions Children with ASD showed typical allocation of attention to faces. This suggests that faces are not aversive to them and they are able to attend to the relevant areas such as eye and mouth regions. This may have been influenced by the inclusion of high functioning children with ASD. However these results may also suggest that attention allocation and gaze behaviour are not the only factors which contribute to the socio-communicative impairments observed in ASD.

In the traditionally patriarchal Hollywood industry, the heterosexual man’s “male gaze,” as coined by feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, is the dominant viewing model for cinematic audiences, leaving little room for a negotiated reading of how visual images are created, presented, and internalized by male and female audiences alike. However, as Hollywood’s shifting feminist landscape becomes increasingly prevalent in the mainstream media, content incorporating the oppositional “female gaze” have become the new norm in both the film and television mediums. Through an extended analysis of the gaze as socialized through gendered learning in children, the “safe space” afforded through the formulaic platform of “boy bands,” and the function of romantic comedies and the emerging feminist rhetoric prevalent in such films as “Magic Mike: XXL,” the conceptual “female gaze” is defined and explored through the demographic of young girls as they grow and push their understanding of desire, particularly as they develop into the mature, media-cosuming women that have become increasingly vocal in the Hollywood sphere.

This study investigates and maps out sociocultural groups in american sitcoms over two decades, the 1990s and 2010s. It also examines whether characters were portrayed in different stereotypes and how and if the male gaze occurs. All this was done through an intersectional perspective. A total of 30 sitcoms, 15 per decade, were examined by a quantitative content analysis. There was 168 characters coded in the sitcoms from the 1990s and 200 characters in the sitcoms from the 2010s, which make a total of 368 coded characters. Key findings showed that sitcoms in the 2010s had more diversity among ethnicity and sexuality compared to sitcoms in the 1990s. Yet caucasian and heterosexueal people were still overrepresented. More men were represented in both 1990s and 2010s sitcoms, but major roles were divided equally between men and women in 2010s american sitcoms. Compared to other studies, surprisingly little sexualization of women occured in the selection of american sitcoms. None of the 368 characters that were coded had any disabilities and very few older and retired people were represented.

Eye tracking technology has made it possible to accurately and consistently track a users gaze position on a screen. The human eyes center of focus, where it can see the most detailed information, is quite small at a given moment. The peripheral vision of humans have a much lower level of details than the center of gaze. Knowing this, it is possible to display a view that increases the level of resolution at the position of the users gaze point on the screen, while the rest of the screen keeps a lower resolution. An implementation of such a system can generate a representation of data with both detail and overview. The results indicate that even with simple gaze data processing it is possible to use gaze control to help explore details of a high resolution image. Gaze data processing often involve a compromise between stability, responsiveness and latency. A low latency, highly responsive gaze data filter would increase the risk for lens oscillation, and demand a higher concentration level from the viewer then a slower filter would. Applying a gaze data filter that allowed for smooth and stable lens movement for small saccades and responsive movements for large saccades proved successfully. With the uses of gaze control the user might be able to use a gaze aware application more efficient since gaze precedes actions. Gaze control would also reduce the need for hand motions which could provide a improved work environment for people interacting with computer.

Cette thèse s’attache à questionner l’utilisation de la pornographie dans la « broderie subversive » par les plasticiennes. Cette démarche semble a priori paradoxale. Pourquoi, les plasticiennes brodent-elles des images de femmes objectivées ? Pourquoi utiliser la broderie alors que cette pratique est considérée comme un passe-temps féminin ? Pourquoi s’emparer de la pornographie, faite par les hommes pour les hommes ? L’analyse d’un large corpus d’œuvres brodées, au prisme des « gender studies » et des « porn studies », permet de saisir les enjeux de cette démarche singulière. Les plasticiennes utilisent un médium caractérisé comme essentialiste pour déconstruire de « l'intérieur » les valeurs patriarcales transmises par la tradition du tissu, posture basée sur une succession de paradoxes. Ainsi, par la représentation brodée du sexuel, voir même de leur sexualité, les plasticiennes sont amenées à questionner leur propre identité de genre. Le sexuel brodé permet de se réapproprier son corps et son imaginaire, de s'interroger personnellement sur son identité (par l'utilisation d'un médium a priori genré). Cette construction du « moi » est soumise à un double paradoxe, tout d'abord celui de l'utilisation d'un médium féminin, subverti par le détournement artistique, et d'images objectivant les corps des femmes alors qu'il s'agit de se les réapproprier. Dans l'exploration de ces deux paradoxes, dans leur confrontation, dans cet espace, peut alors se penser l'identité (de femme et d'artiste) dans une société androcentrée. / This thesis aims to interrogate how women artists use pornography in the subversiv stitch. This reflection might seem paradoxical. Why do women artists embroider pictures of objectified women ? Why use embroidery ? And why appropriate pornography that is made by men for men ? The analysis of a large corpus of embroiedered works, though the lens of gender studies and porn studies, allows to seize the issues of this peculiar approach. Women artists use a medium defined as essentialist to decompose – from the inside – the patriarchal values inherited from the textile tradition. Through the embroidered representation of the sexual – even of their own sexuality – women artist are led to question their own gender identity. The Embroidered sexual allows one to reappropriate their body and imaginary – and to interrogate themself about their identity (through a medium primarily perceived as gendered). This construction of the self is submitted to a double paradox, hich is the use of a feminine medium – subverted by artistic hijacking – and pictures of objectified female bodies, whereas the whole purpose is actually to reappropriate those bodies. Somewhere between those paradoxes might emerge and be thought the identity – of woman and artist – in a androcentric society.

Denna studie undersöker problemområdet sexualiseringen av kvinnokroppen på sociala medier, eftersom det är en stor källa till visuella intryck idag. Syftet är att undersöka hur influencers, mer specifikt Fanny Lyckman och Amanda Ekström representerar kvinnokroppen i sociala medier utifrån ett postfeministiskt perspektiv, och där frågeställning lyder: Hur representerar Lyckman och Ekström kvinnokroppen i sina sociala medier utifrån ett postfeministiskt perspektiv i relation till sexualiseringen av kulturen? Studien genomförs med en kvalitativ semiotisk visuell analys där materialet undersöks enskilt samt kompareras. Teorin som appliceras är bland annat postfeminism, representation och gaze-teori. Resultatet av undersökningen visar att Lyckman objektifierar och sexualiserar sin kropp vilket skapar en tydlig koppling till mjukpornografin, och att den manliga blicken används. Ekströms bilder är också avklädda, men det finns ingen tydlig koppling till pornografins bildspråk, här är modellerna i stället subjekt och bilderna utgår inte från en manlig blick, snarare en icke-blick. Både Lyckman och Ekström representerar kvinnokroppen medvetet med en underton av empowerment, samtidigt som det finns kopplingar till hur kvinnokroppen stereotypiskt representerats genom historien och sexuella anspelningar, framför allt i Lyckmans material vilket skapar en dubbelhet i resultatet.

Initially, my developing body of work aimed to redesign the traditions of representational painting, specifically the female nude, to depict the contemporary notions of lesbianism and femininity in an honest and empowering manner as a form of identity and not as vehicle for voyeurism. As an artist who paints the female nude and identifies as a woman and a lesbian, I examine the preexisting notions of the male gaze and the effect of socialization as it pertains to my work. The act of looking from the point of view of a woman, which is not synonymous with a "female gaze", or from the point of view of a lesbian, is not a birthright, but a conscious effort to constantly question the way we see and produce pictures and realizing that the male gaze permeates most images of female nudes. By the nature of my sexuality and my exposure to existing male-produced images, do I see the female nude through the male gaze or is there a gaze that is essentially female? Does it matter either way if the image is aesthetically compelling? My paintings neither attempt to conform to the male gaze or debunk it, nor do I attempt to prove the existence of a female gaze. Like Edgar Degas, I wish to look through a keyhole-a form of voyeurism-to see people outside of their public facade.