My word! There has been so much going on this semester. I have learned a lot but have been so busy learning that I have neglected to document some of my experiences. I thought I'd take a minute to talk about the experience I had last week with the technology called Eagle Eyes, which uses five electrodes placed on an individual's face to track the movement of their eyes. This essentially allows them to control a cursor on a computer with their eyes. It's relatively new and is already opening a lot of doors. For more information about Eagle Eyes, you can go to eagleeyes.org, but for now I want to tell you about my experience getting an individual I work with in to test out Eagle Eyes. Here goes:
We started talking about Eagle Eyes at the beginning of this semester and I immediately became interested. Once a week, I take care of a 43-year-old woman with Rett syndrome, who lives with her mother who is in her 70's. Mindy does not speak, does not point with her hand, but simply cries out if she is in pain, like an infant, and it is then up to caregivers to guess what the problem could be. Since she has no language and cannot point, formal tests of intelligence have yielded no insight into Mindy's capabilities, and, consequently, we have no way of knowing what goes on in Mindy's head. Despite all this, Mindy has excellent eye contact. She often follows your movement with her eyes, an expression of intensity burning in them, while other times she seems to glaze over and is distant. So far we have not found a way to communicate with her even when she seems to be paying perfect attention to us. When I heard about Eagle Eyes for the first time, Mindy immediately popped into my mind. I knew that this might not work for her, but I knew I absolutely must try.
On November 24, Mindy, her mother Ruth, and I went up to Jordan Valley School and Mindy tried Eagle Eyes for the first time. I didn't expect very much, because, from my observations, it seemed that it might take some practice for her to understand that she has the ability to control and manipulate something outside herself. I was surprised to see how much Eye Painting engaged her. She seemed to focus on the star lines that followed her eyes. She only got one alien on her own in the next game before she got tired and stopped paying attention. When we were done, she seemed completely exhausted, and I think that it is probably safe to say that she has probably never worked so hard in her life. The steps we made were baby steps, but in watching how engaged she was with this device, I thought that this could be a great thing as we keep on practicing!
I am so happy with how the program has been designed, that everyone can do something on paint, that it's a "no lose" game. I do wish that there were more ways to customize the product, to put in things of more interest to the individual for initial testing. For example, Mindy loves bears and she loves High School musical, so if we could download a cursor online that had the face of Zac Efron, or that was a moving blackbear, we would be sure to get Mindy's attention. I think that in the future, this program is going to take off and the options will be endless. I really think that this is incredible, and the people who are doing this work have begun something incredible.
