A Long-Term Engagement with a Social Robot for Autism Therapy
- PMID: 34222353
- PMCID: PMC8241906
- DOI: 10.3389/frobt.2021.669972
A Long-Term Engagement with a Social Robot for Autism Therapy
Abstract
Social robots are increasingly being used as a mediator between a therapist and a child in autism therapy studies. In this context, most behavioural interventions are typically short-term in nature. This paper describes a long-term study that was conducted with 11 children diagnosed with either Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) or ASD in co-occurrence with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). It uses a quantitative analysis based on behavioural measures, including engagement, valence, and eye gaze duration. Each child interacted with a robot on several occasions in which each therapy session was customized to a child's reaction to robot behaviours. This paper presents a set of robot behaviours that were implemented with the goal to offer a variety of activities to be suitable for diverse forms of autism. Therefore, each child experienced an individualized robot-assisted therapy that was tailored according to the therapist's knowledge and judgement. The statistical analyses showed that the proposed therapy managed to sustain children's engagement. In addition, sessions containing familiar activities kept children more engaged compared to those sessions containing unfamiliar activities. The results of the interviews with parents and therapists are discussed in terms of therapy recommendations. The paper concludes with some reflections on the current study as well as suggestions for future studies.
Keywords: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; autism spectrum disorder; human-robot interaction; robot-assisted therapy; social robots.
Copyright © 2021 Rakhymbayeva, Amirova and Sandygulova.
Conflict of interest statement
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Figures
Similar articles
-
Effects of Parental Involvement in Robot-Assisted Autism Therapy.J Autism Dev Disord. 2023 Jan;53(1):438-455. doi: 10.1007/s10803-022-05429-x. Epub 2022 Jan 28. J Autism Dev Disord. 2023. PMID: 35088233 Free PMC article.
-
Improving social skills in children with ASD using a long-term, in-home social robot.Sci Robot. 2018 Aug 22;3(21):eaat7544. doi: 10.1126/scirobotics.aat7544. Sci Robot. 2018. PMID: 33141724 Free PMC article.
-
"Sequencing Matters": Investigating Suitable Action Sequences in Robot-Assisted Autism Therapy.Front Robot AI. 2022 Mar 9;9:784249. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2022.784249. eCollection 2022. Front Robot AI. 2022. PMID: 35356059 Free PMC article.
-
Computer- and Robot-Assisted Therapies to Aid Social and Intellectual Functioning of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.Medicina (Kaunas). 2019 Aug 5;55(8):440. doi: 10.3390/medicina55080440. Medicina (Kaunas). 2019. PMID: 31387274 Free PMC article. Review.
-
Robot-Assisted Autism Therapy (RAAT). Criteria and Types of Experiments Using Anthropomorphic and Zoomorphic Robots. Review of the Research.Sensors (Basel). 2021 May 27;21(11):3720. doi: 10.3390/s21113720. Sensors (Basel). 2021. PMID: 34071829 Free PMC article. Review.
Cited by
-
Parental involvement in robot-mediated intervention: a systematic review.Front Psychol. 2024 Jul 9;15:1355901. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1355901. eCollection 2024. Front Psychol. 2024. PMID: 39049952 Free PMC article.
-
People with Autism Spectrum Disorder Could Interact More Easily with a Robot than with a Human: Reasons and Limits.Behav Sci (Basel). 2024 Feb 12;14(2):131. doi: 10.3390/bs14020131. Behav Sci (Basel). 2024. PMID: 38392485 Free PMC article. Review.
-
Social robot for older adults with cognitive decline: a preliminary trial.Front Robot AI. 2023 Nov 24;10:1213705. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2023.1213705. eCollection 2023. Front Robot AI. 2023. PMID: 38077459 Free PMC article.
-
Social Robots and Brain-Computer Interface Video Games for Dealing with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: A Systematic Review.Brain Sci. 2023 Aug 7;13(8):1172. doi: 10.3390/brainsci13081172. Brain Sci. 2023. PMID: 37626528 Free PMC article. Review.
-
Fully robotic social environment for teaching and practicing affective interaction: Case of teaching emotion recognition skills to children with autism spectrum disorder, a pilot study.Front Robot AI. 2023 May 3;10:1088582. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2023.1088582. eCollection 2023. Front Robot AI. 2023. PMID: 37207048 Free PMC article.
References
-
- Andrist S., Mutlu B., Tapus A. (2015). “Look like Me: Matching Robot Personality via Gaze to Increase Motivation,” in Proc. 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Seoul, Republic of Korea, April 18–23, 2015 (New York, NY: ACM; ), 3603–3612.
-
- Anzalone S. M., Xavier J., Boucenna S., Billeci L., Narzisi A., Muratori F., et al. (2019). Quantifying Patterns of Joint Attention during Human-Robot Interactions: An Application for Autism Spectrum Disorder Assessment. Pattern Recognition Lett. 118, 42–50. 10.1016/j.patrec.2018.03.007 - DOI
-
- Baraka K., Alves-Oliveira P., Ribeiro T. (2020). Chap. Human-Robot Interaction: Evaluation Methods and Their Standardization. An Extended Framework for Characterizing Social Robots. Cham: Springer International Publishing). 21–64. 10.1007/978-3-030-42307-0-2 - DOI
-
- Baxter P., Belpaeme T., Cañamero L., Cosi P., Demiris Y., Enescu V. (2011). “Long-term Human-Robot Interaction with Young Users,” in Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE Human-Robot Interaction conference (HRI-2011) (Robots with Children Workshop), Lausanne, Switzerland, March 6–9, 2011 (Stockholm, Sweden: Mobile Life Centre; ).
-
- Baxter P., Kennedy J., Senft E., Lemaignan S., Belpaeme T. (2016). “From Characterising Three Years of Hri to Methodology and Reporting recommendations,” in XI ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Christchurch, New Zealand, March 7–10, 2016 (Manhattan, NY: IEEE; ), 391–398. 10.1109/HRI.2016.7451777 - DOI
LinkOut - more resources
Full Text Sources