Theory of Robot Mind: False Belief Attribution to Social Robots in Children With and Without Autism.

Yaoxin Zhang,Zhenlin Tan,Qianhan Xiong,Sio Pan Hoi,Cheuk Man Lam,Li Yi,Wenxu Song,Yuyin Wang,Jiajia Chen

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01732

Abstract

This study aims to probe how children with and without autism spectrum disorders (ASD) attribute false belief to a social robot and predict its action accordingly. Twenty 5- to 7-year-old children with ASD and 20 age- and IQ-matched typically developing (TD) children participated in two false belief tasks adapted for robot settings (change-of-location task and the unexpected-contents task). The results showed that most TD children are capable of attributing false belief to the social robot, that is, they could infer higher level mental states in robots, which extends our understanding in TD children’s perception and cognition on social robots. Conversely, children with ASD still show difficulty in interpreting robots’ mental states compared to their TD peers, which would greatly interfere with their interactions and communications with social robots and might impact on efficiency of robot-based intervention and education approaches. This group difference in attributing false belief to social robots could not be explained by the different perception and categorization of the robot. Our study implies that although children with ASD appear to be highly attracted by social robots, they still have difficulty in understanding mental states when socially interacting with robots, which should be taken into consideration when designing the robot-based intervention approach targeting to improve social behaviors of ASD.

Highlights

Robots are one of the scientific and technological advances that greatly contribute to the momentous development in our contemporary lives
These findings suggest that like their deficits in interpreting other persons’ mental states in traditional false belief tasks, children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are less likely than typically developing (TD) children to attribute mental states to the social robot
The results showed that most 5- to 7-year-old TD children could attribute false belief to the social robot

Summary

Introduction

Robots are one of the scientific and technological advances that greatly contribute to the momentous development in our contemporary lives. Especially social robots, have been used in the field of education since they could function as educationists and caregivers with well-designed motor and communication capacities (Fong et al, 2003; Jipson and Gelman, 2007). Apart from using robots in typically developing (TD) children, there is an increasing need for applying the social robot in the interventions for children with special needs, such as children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). ASD is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is characterized by restricted and repetitive behaviors and social-communication impairments (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Using robots to improve their social behaviors is promising. It has been shown that children with ASD improved their joint attention ability when interacting with a robotic system (Warren et al, 2015). Despite the evident advantages of using robots for training and educating children, from a fundamental perspective, it is still unclear how children perceive and understand social robots, which is of key importance for the design and application of robot-based training and education approaches

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