The Effects of Long-Term Child–Robot Interaction on the Attention and the Engagement of Children with Autism

Abstract

Using a social robot has been proven to have multiple benefits for the training of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, there is no clarity on the impact of the interaction quality between a child with ASD and a robot on the effectiveness of the therapy. Previous research showed that the use of a robot in Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT) could be an effective treatment component in diminishing ASD-related symptoms. Further analyzing the data from a randomized controlled trial of PRT treatment, we looked at the long-term effects of child–robot game interactions to see whether the interaction quality changes over time. The attention and the engagement of six children were measured through the observation of non-verbal behavior at three different stages in the treatment that took 20 sessions per child. The gaze and arm/hand behavior of the participants towards the robot, the game, and other present humans were observed. The analysis showed no significant decrease in the attention and the engagement of the children towards the robot and the game. However, the attention and engagement toward the parents of the children increased. We conclude that the main result of sustained attention and engagement with the robot is due to the personalization of the games to meet the specific needs of this user group. These specific needs are met through inclusion of variability to the level of development and personal choice of each participating child. We see the additional finding of increased attention towards the parents as especially positive since the children are expected to improve in human–human interaction as a result of this treatment.

Promoting Social Engagement With a Multi-Role Dancing Robot for In-Home Autism Care

“…Future studies will include comparison studies with typically developing children, with more advanced reinforcement learning algorithms and deep learning frameworks, and clinical evaluations in long term with our clinical collaborators. Long-term interaction and longitudinal analysis ( Clabaugh et al, 2018 ; Clabaugh et al, 2019 ; van Otterdijk et al, 2020 ) are very important topics in HRI, especially for the robots to function more effectively “in-the-wild” ( Park et al, 2020 ), and our future efforts plan to address these factors more dedication and collaboration.…”

Effects of Parental Involvement in Robot-Assisted Autism Therapy

“…The authors emphasize the importance of parental involvement since it allows researchers to observe child behaviors outside the intervention and generalize improvements. Following this study, Otterdijk et al (2020) reported that children remained attentive and engaged with their parents throughout the multiple robot-assisted PRT sessions. In general, parents seem supportive of social robots and their application in autism therapy.…”

Aspects of the Intrinsic Motivation as Accessibility Factors in the Inclusive "STEAM" Education

“…От гледна точка на учещия обаче, богатството на субективния опит е много по-широко, включващо също така засилване на мотивационните фактори в ученето [напр. 5,6].…”