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Multi-Purposeful Activities for Robot-Assisted Autism Therapy: What Works Best for Children's Social Outcomes?

Published: 13 March 2023 Publication History

Abstract

This research designed and applied 24 multi-purposeful robot activities of varying social mediation levels in a multiple-session experiment with 34 children of diverse autistic characteristics in a rehabilitation setting. This paper explores what type of robot activities can meet individual needs to bring more socio-behavioral progress and juxtaposes child characteristics to identify behavioral outcomes in each activity. This knowledge would help us to respond to the question of what activity types suit specific subgroups of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Our data analysis included coding 48.5 hours of video data for a total of 14 measures to fully capture children's activity-based socio-emotional outcomes. Overall, the activities on varying social mediation levels brought more or less positive social outcomes to all children. However, children showed some different behavioral outcomes as mediated by core autism-related and age-specific characteristics. This study provides in-depth accounts of what might be helpful in designing and applying multi-purposeful activities responsive to the diverse needs of children.

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Cited By

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  • (2024)People with Autism Spectrum Disorder Could Interact More Easily with a Robot than with a Human: Reasons and LimitsBehavioral Sciences10.3390/bs1402013114:2(131)Online publication date: 12-Feb-2024
  • (2024)“It looks useful, works just fine, but will it replace me ?" Understanding Special Educators’ Perception of Social Robots for Autism Care in IndiaProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642836(1-23)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2024)Co-designing a social robot for child health careInternational Journal of Child-Computer Interaction10.1016/j.ijcci.2023.10061538:COnline publication date: 27-Feb-2024
  • Show More Cited By

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cover image ACM Conferences
HRI '23: Proceedings of the 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction
March 2023
631 pages
ISBN:9781450399647
DOI:10.1145/3568162
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Published: 13 March 2023

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  1. autism spectrum disorder (asd)
  2. children
  3. robot-assisted therapy

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View all
  • (2024)People with Autism Spectrum Disorder Could Interact More Easily with a Robot than with a Human: Reasons and LimitsBehavioral Sciences10.3390/bs1402013114:2(131)Online publication date: 12-Feb-2024
  • (2024)“It looks useful, works just fine, but will it replace me ?" Understanding Special Educators’ Perception of Social Robots for Autism Care in IndiaProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642836(1-23)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2024)Co-designing a social robot for child health careInternational Journal of Child-Computer Interaction10.1016/j.ijcci.2023.10061538:COnline publication date: 27-Feb-2024
  • (2024)Sonic Sleight of Hand: Sound Induces Illusory Distortions in the Perception and Prediction of Robot ActionInternational Journal of Social Robotics10.1007/s12369-024-01105-5Online publication date: 17-Feb-2024

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