Robot Enhanced Therapy for Children with Autism (DREAM): A Social Model of Autism

Abstract

According to biomedical science, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by widespread abnormalities in social interactions and communication, as well as severely restricted interests and highly repetitive behavior [41]. The diagnostic criteria for ASD included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5) [41], refer to ASD as a single diagnosis category that includes autistic disorder (autism), Asperger's disorder, childhood disintegrative disorder, and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified [41]. Autism is a very specific difference in the ability to read social cues, understand social interaction, and respond appropriately. In general terms, the level of cognitive ability, intelligence, perception, use of language, degree of withdrawal, excitability, self-injury, and physical appearance will vary greatly in autistic persons [43]. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), ASD occurs in 1 in 68 children and is almost five times more common among boys than girls: 1 in 42 boys versus 1 in 189 girls. While autism affects

A Systematic Review of Robotic Rehabilitation for Cognitive Training

“…The literature include cognitive training robots in the forms of companion robots, social robots, assistive robots, social assisted robots, or service robots, which are collectively referred to as "cognitive training robots" in this systematic review. The literature employed different terminologies for cognitive training by rehabilitation robots, such as robot-enhanced therapy (David et al, 2018;Richardson et al, 2018), robot-assisted intervention (Scassellati et al, 2018), robot-assisted treatment (Taheri et al, 2015a), robot-assisted training (Tsiakas et al, 2018), robotassisted therapy (Sandygulova et al, 2019), robot-mediated therapy (Begum et al, 2015;Huskens et al, 2015). Here, we do not distinguish between these different terms and instead adopt the term of "robot-assisted training" to represent all these different terms.…”

Design for an Art Therapy Robot: An Explorative Review of the Theoretical Foundations for Engaging in Emotional and Creative Painting with a Robot

“…Some similar arguments have been made in human science: for example, it has been proposed that some approaches could be oppressive if there is some disagreement in values between therapist and patient [72,73]. This line of thought was also echoed in the area of human-robot interaction, for therapy in general, by Ziemke and colleagues, who questioned the assumption that the therapist is an all-knowing expert who can deduce the truth [54], and by Tapus et al who also advocated that therapy robots should be hands-off [74]. Furthermore Kahn et al stated that the important target is how to design a scenario in which people will interact with robots as partners in a joint creative enterprise [75].…”

“…In addition, various other general healthcare robots have been built, which can carry, monitor, and fetch items for humans [51][52][53]. Moreover, recently a need to develop more autonomous therapy robots has been described by researchers in the DREAM project, using the term "Robot enhanced therapy" (RET); their goal is to use robots as a tool to help children with autism to improve social skills comprising turn-taking, joint attention, imitation, in conjunction with Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA), a learning theory based on behavioral repetition and cognitive association [54]. Art therapy could also potentially be structured to improve such social skills.…”

Interactive robots with model-based ‘autism-like’ behaviors

“…In fact, ASD may introduce interesting and rich subtleties, idiosyncrasies, and proactive behaviors not seen in typically developing individuals. On a more global note, calling robots or agents 'autistic' may be dangerous because it reinforces erroneous assumptions on how the autistic mind functions [9]. In this work we use the term 'autism-like' to refer merely to the robot behaviors themselves.…”