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    How can robots facilitate social interaction of children with autism?: Possibleimplications for educational environments
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    Abstract:
    Children with autism have difficulties in social interaction with other people and much attention in recent years has been directed to robots as therapy tools. We studied the social interaction between children with autism and robots longitudinally to observe developmental changes in their performance. We observed children at a special school for six months and analyzed their performance with robots. The results showed that two children adapted to the experimental situations and developed interaction with the robots. This suggests that they changed their interaction with the robots from an object-like one into an agentlike one.
    While there is a rich history of studies involving robots and individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), few of these studies have made substantial impact in the clinical research community. In this paper we first examine how differences in approach, study design, evaluation, and publication practices have hindered uptake of these research results. Based on ten years of collaboration, we suggest a set of design principles that satisfy the needs (both academic and cultural) of both the robotics and clinical autism research communities. Using these principles, we present a study that demonstrates a quantitatively measured improvement in human-human social interaction for children with ASD, effected by interaction with a robot.
    Citations (128)
    The core symptom of children with autism is social difficulties. According to the research, one of the main psychological factors supposed to underlie in these difficulties is the lack or low levels of joint attention with the interaction partners. The use of robots in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) interventions has received a lot of attention in the last years. Robots can achieve high levels of effectiveness in interacting with children with autism. This paper presents robots that play several important roles and benefits in the interaction of children with autism. In the absence of dialogue corpus, we collected and integrated conversation data for children with autism. We present to use a neural network to build a robot dialogue system that generates answers freely without restrictions, and design robot movements to attract attention from children with autism. Most importantly, the robot will interact smoothly with autistic children without human intervention.
    Joint Attention
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    Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) typically appears during the first three years of life. It exhibits certain characteristics such as impairment in social interaction and communication skill. This paper analyzed the use of robots in augmenting social and communication skills among ASD children. The features and characteristics of seven widely used robots and their impacts were included. There are variety of robots worldwide being used as therapy assistants in ASD therapy with multiple functions and appearances. Thus, future study can focus on how to combine the features and advantages of each robot to create more efficient robots in helping children with ASD.
    Social Skills
    Social Communication
    Social robot
    Citations (1)
    According to the World Health Organization, 0.62% of the world’s population has autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which is equivalent to 1 in 160 children. People with ASD have difficulties in communicative behaviors and social interaction. The assistance requirements to improve these deficits are complex. This research´s primary objective is to propose and implement a robotic theater called ART (Autism Robotic Theater) as a technological assistance tool to contribute to increase social interaction in children diagnosed with ASD. This robotic theater is based on a set of homogeneous humanoid robots performing gestures and actions. ART is formed by 3 NAO robots, a curtain, a narrator, and a software program that allows creating scripts easily and intuitively, to later interpret them. ART was presented in different sessions, to a group of children with ASD under two scenarios. The first scenario aims to encourage the interest and interaction of children with the tool. The second scenario uses the tool to develop a play where robots and children participate, encouraging interaction between them. From the results of an initial and a final evaluation of the children’s performance stands out an increase of 43.75% in the children’s imitation level and, increase of 39.58% in the children’s response and interaction with the robots. Despite the short evaluation time due to the pandemic, the results of the proposed structure have been favorable in the execution of the play in parallel with homogeneous robots and, the impact that the two scenarios have presented in children with TEA.
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