This study investigated if and how KASPAR could promote interactions between a child with ASD and another person. It specifically addresses the question of whether the robot could facilitate the acquisition of knowledge about human body parts, an issue present in many children on the spectrum. Regarding the research questions presented in the beginning of this chapter, the following implications were found:
(a) Can the robot elicit increased interaction levels between the child and the other person in the experiment?: Expectations regarding this research ques- tion were supported, with the children showing significantly more gaze directed towards KASPAR over sessions. However, along the sessions this behaviour was transferred to the experimenter;
(b) Can the robot elicit the ability to acquire knowledge about human body parts?: Expectations regarding this research question were partially met. The comparison of the scores in the pre- and the post-test allow concluding that the children managed to acquire new knowledge regarding body parts but not significantly. However, the results from the performance during the activities in the practice phase gives a clue that KASPAR contributed to a knowledge acquisition;
(c) Can the robot help teaching children with ASD appropriate physical (tac- tile) social engagement?: There was no typical pattern in the data regarding tactile interaction, however the number of harsh touches toward the robot was always lower than the gentle tactile interaction, which suggests the robot was a useful tool to encourage children with ASD to perform appropriate physical social engagement.
The goals of this research were to understand if and how the robot could promote inter- actions between a child with ASD and another person, and whether it could facilitate the ability to acquire knowledge about human body parts. The results of this study indicate that KASPAR can be used as an effective tool to elicit new knowledge about body parts, and also as a object of shared attention to improve social interactions with a human partner. Finally, the acquisition of appropriate physical social engagement was observed, using three different play scenarios. These structured play scenarios followed a strict experimental regime, are fully documented and hence represent a first step in the design of reliable behavioural tools for the development of potential future robot interventions.
3.5
Summary and Conclusions
This chapter presents a study in which the children were encouraged to learn about human body parts and simultaneously the robot was equipped with tactile sensors to act accordingly to touches from the children. The goal was to verify whether the robot could facilitate the interaction between the child and another person in the experiment using appropriate physical social engagement, and to acquire knowledge about human body parts.
Chapter 3. Body Awareness and Appropriate Physical Interaction 91 time they looked at the experimenter increased. Additionally, children who initially were not able to identify some of the body parts in the pre-test, showed an improvement of their knowledge, tested in the post-test. Regarding tactile interaction, the robot was a useful tool to promote appropriate tactile interaction since gentle touches on the robot were always lower than harsh touches along the sessions. It is necessary to point out that it is not possible to exclude that any observed improvements could be due to other activities at school or at home.
A triadic relationship was promoted between the child, the robot and the experimenter and the robot represents an alternative tool to already existing interventions with children with ASD, and the scenarios in which it can be used may be adapted to specific needs of a group of children, such as imitation, academic skills, and verbal communication. This study offers empirical support for continuing the research on how to use robots to foster social interaction with children with ASD.
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Chapter 4
Building Scenarios for Human-Robot
Interaction in Children with ASD
The content of this chapter is part of the following publications:
• Costa, Sandra, et al. (2012), Constraints in the design of activities focusing on emotion recognition for children with ASD using robotic tools. 4th IEEE RAS & EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob);
• Costa, Sandra, et al. (2013), Facial Expressions and Gestures to Convey Emo- tions with a Humanoid Robot. ICSR 2013, International Conference on Social Robotics (pp. 542-551). Springer International Publishing;
• Costa, Sandra, et al. (2014), Building a Game Scenario to Encourage Children with Autism to Recognize and Label Emotions using a Humanoid Robot, Ro- man 2014, 23rd IEEE International Symposium on robot and human interactive communication;
• Costa, Sandra, et al. (2014), A Pilot Study using Imitation and Storytelling Scenarios as Activities for Labelling Emotions by Children with Autism using a Humanoid Robot, IEEE ICDL-EPIROB 2014, The Fourth Joint IEEE Interna- tional Conference on Development and Learning and on Epigenetic Robotics.
4.1
Introduction
This chapter presents different studies aiming the preparation of the research in Chap- ter 5. Section 4.2 includes the results of a questionnaire and focus groups performed with professionals who work with children with ASD. The hardware and the com- mon materials used in following studies are presented in section 4.3 and section 4.4 presents the developed software. Section 4.5 presents a perceptual study where facial expressions and gestures performed by a humanoid robot were evaluated by typically developing children and adults. With the information and content of these studies, sections 4.6 and 4.7 present exploratory studies with a reduced sample of children with ASD to test three different game scenarios, aiming the identification and labelling of