It is important to provide interpersonal interaction support to children with ASD who have problems with communication. An intervention program called NDBI (Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Intervention) which focuses on supporting interpersonal interaction for children with ASD has demonstrated that it is necessary for the child and therapist to keep an appropriate distance while playing with each other. Therefore, measuring interpersonal distance could be important for analyzing the effects of the intervention and monitoring the support of children with ASD. In this study, we used motion capture methods to measure the interpersonal distance between children with ASD and their therapists in a play scene. We examined whether interpersonal distance changed between pre- and post-intervention to determine the effects of the intervention. In this study, to evaluate the behavior of children with ASD who have difficulty being equipped with measurement devices, we conducted a reproduction experiment with two adults. Moreover, the procedures were as followed. Firstly, we selected two video clips from recorded scenes. One was pre-intervention and one was post-intervention. Then two adults recreated the two scenes as the therapist and the child. Secondly, we used motion capture system to measure their interpersonal distance and their variations in the recreated scenes chronologically. We referenced the previous study of Rogers & Fine (1977), and used the mean value of interpersonal distance and the frequency of rapid change in interpersonal distance as indexes. As a result, the recreated post-intervention scenes showed a smaller mean value of interpersonal distance and lower frequency of rapid change in interpersonal distance. Therefore, this study demonstrated that it could be possible to evaluate the effects of the intervention using motion capture system to automatically measure fluctuations in interpersonal distance. In the future, it would be necessary to gather data in clinical situations targeting children with ASD.

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