Abstract
This study explores the response of autistic children to a few design features of the robots for autism therapy and provides suggestions on the robot features that have a stronger influence on the therapeutic process. First, we investigate the effect of selected robot features on the development of social communication skills in autistic children. The results indicate that the toy's “face” and “moving limb” usually draw the children's attention and improve children's facial expression skills, but do not contribute to the development of other social communication skills. Secondly, we study the response of children with low-functioning autism to robots with verbal communication functionalities. Test results show that children interacted with the verbal-featured robot more intensively than with the experimenter. We conclude that robots with faces and moving limbs can engage autistic children in a better way. Facial expression of the robots can elicit a greater response than prompting by humans.
Highlights
Autism is associated with impairment in communication skills and stereotyped behaviour that affect children’s reciprocal social interaction [1]
In line with the above‐reviewed previous research, the present study investigates the optimal design of robots for autistic children by exploring the effect of different robot features on the children’s social communication skills
Results showed that toys with faces facilitate more often the development of social skill and facial expression skills than the toys without faces (p< .05)
Summary
Autism is associated with impairment in communication skills and stereotyped behaviour that affect children’s reciprocal social interaction [1]. The results of this study confirmed autistic children’s insensitivity to other people’s facial expressions According to these findings, autistic children tend to ignore information about human features. Kozima et al invented a creature‐like robot with a simple appearance named Keepon and they found that their robot attracted the attention of and caused emotions in the autistic children who took part in the experiments These results implied that robots have the potential to improve autistic children’s communication skills [5]. In line with the above‐reviewed previous research, the present study investigates the optimal design of robots for autistic children by exploring the effect of different robot features on the children’s social communication skills. Study 2 explores the effect of the verbal function of the therapeutic robots on the children’s communication skills
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