Robot-Assisted Joint Attention: A Comparative Study Between Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder and Typically Developing Children in Interaction With NAO

Hoang-Long Cao,Johan Vanderfaeillie,Greet Van De Perre,Naomi Desmet,Ramona Elena Simut,Bram Vanderborght,Albert De Beir

doi:10.1109/access.2020.3044483

Hoang-Long Cao, Johan Vanderfaeillie + Show 5 more

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https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2020.3044483

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Journal: IEEE Access	Publication Date: Jan 1, 2020
Citations: 73	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Flanders Make (Belgium)

Abstract

Robots have been used in joint attention (JA) tasks with children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, very few studies compared JA performance of children with ASD with typically developing children (TD) when interacting with a robotic partner and a traditional human partner. This study aims to: (a) to explore whether there are differences in response to and initiation of JA between ASD and TD children with two interactive partners: an adult and a social robot (NAO); and (b) to explore which characteristics of ASD children predicting their performance in robot-assisted JA tasks. Twenty-seven ASD and forty TD children were involved in this study in which they were exposed to diffident JA tasks. Mixed results were found per type of JA behavior over groups and conditions. Our results show that both ASD and TD children performed better with the human partner than with the robot in response to JA tasks. Among the characteristics of ASD children, ADOS total score is associated with response to JA performance. No significant result related to initiation of JA was found.

Highlights

O NE of the main characteristics of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a social deficit, in which the impairment of joint attention (JA) plays a crucial role [1]
This study aims to: (a) to explore whether there are differences in response to and initiation of JA between ASD and typically developing children (TD) children with two interactive partners: an adult and a social robot (NAO); and (b) to explore which characteristics of ASD children predicting their performance in robot-assisted JA tasks
The same significant main effect of the interaction partner was obtained on the initiation of JA (IJA) performance, F (1, 65) = 11.60, p = .01, ηp2 = .15, with a significantly different IJA performance when interacting with an adult (M = 3.72, SD = 2.28) and with a robot (M = 2.49, SD = 2.50)

Summary

Introduction

O NE of the main characteristics of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a social deficit, in which the impairment of joint attention (JA) plays a crucial role [1]. JA has often been measured and conceptualized in terms of two types of behaviors: (a) response to JA (RJA) i.e. the ability to respond to another person’s vocal cues, or to follow their gaze, head-turns or pointing gestures, and (b) initiation of JA (IJA) i.e. the tendency to initiate social attention by pointing, showing, or alternating gaze between an interesting object or event and a social partner [2]. A lack of IJA skills is one of the earliest signs of autism [6]. This deficit in children with ASD cuts them off from several forms of social learning in both daily-life and educational settings. Young children that are unable to follow, engage, and react to JA may forever be impaired in their capacity for relatedness and relationships [7], [8]

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