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Human–robot interaction in autism treatment: a case study on three pairs of autistic children as twins, siblings, and classmates

Taheri, A ; Sharif University of Technology | 2018

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  1. Type of Document: Article
  2. DOI: 10.1007/s12369-017-0433-8
  3. Publisher: Springer Netherlands , 2018
  4. Abstract:
  5. In this paper, three pairs of children with autism include a pair of twins, two siblings, and two classmates were enrolled in a 12-session robot-assisted group-games program. As many environmental factors were for the most part the same for the siblings as well as genetic factors for the twins, we were able to observe/compare the effect of the designed games on the participants individually and in paired-groups. The results indicated that all participants’ autism severity decreased after the course of the program. Improvement in social skills, social participation/avoidance, and detrimental social behaviors were also observed in the participants with high-functioning autism with close to being large Cohen’s d effect sizes. Moreover, based on the video coders’ observations the joint attention, gaze scores toward the robot, and verbal communications of the paired-groups increased significantly over the treatment time (p< 0.05). However, in general, the designed program effect on the subjects’ behavior seems to be different for participants from different points on the autism spectrum; and even the high-functioning subjects showed different potential behavioral progress. © 2017, Springer Science+Business Media B.V
  6. Keywords:
  7. Human–robot interaction ; Anthropomorphic robots ; Diseases ; Robots ; Autism spectrum disorders ; Humanoid robot ; Imitation ; Joint attention ; Robot interactions ; Social skills ; Human robot interaction
  8. Source: International Journal of Social Robotics ; Volume 10, Issue 1 , January , 2018 , Pages 93-113 ; 18754791 (ISSN)
  9. URL: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12369-017-0433-8