Robotic animals might aid in the social development of children with autism
- 12 March 2008
- conference paper
- conference paper
- Published by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Human robot interaction - HRI '08
- p. 271-278
- https://doi.org/10.1145/1349822.1349858
Abstract
This study investigated whether a robotic dog might aid in the social development of children with autism. Eleven children diagnosed with autism (ages 5-8) interacted with the robotic dog AIBO and, during a different period within the same experimental session, a simple mechanical toy dog (Kasha), which had no ability to detect or respond to its physical or social environment. Results showed that, in comparison to Kasha, the children spoke more words to AIBO, and more often engaged in three types of behavior with AIBO typical of children without autism: verbal engagement, reciprocal interaction, and authentic interaction. In addition, we found suggestive evidence (with p values ranging from .07 to .09) that the children interacted more with AIBO, and, while in the AIBO session, engaged in fewer autistic behaviors. Discussion focuses on why robotic animals might benefit children with autism.Keywords
This publication has 16 references indexed in Scilit:
- What is a Human?Interaction Studies, 2007
- Affect Recognition in Robot Assisted Rehabilitation of Children with Autism Spectrum DisorderProceedings 2001 ICRA. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (cat. No.01ch37164), 2007
- Quantitative metrics of social response for autism diagnosisPublished by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) ,2006
- Designing and Observing Human-Robot Interactions for the Study of Social Development and its DisordersPublished by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) ,2005
- A humanoid in company with childrenPublished by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) ,2005
- Robotic assistants in therapy and education of children with autism: can a small humanoid robot help encourage social interaction skills?Universal Access in the Information Society, 2005
- Robots as assistive technology - does appearance matter?Published by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) ,2005
- Towards interactive robots in autism therapySex, Death & Politics, 2004
- Towards adaptive autonomous robots in autism therapy: varieties of interactionsPublished by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) ,2004
- Hardware companions?Published by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) ,2003