Robot Assistants In Education of Children with Autism: Interaction Between The Robot and The Child

Abstract

This study examined the interaction between humanoid robots and children with autism. In this study, multiple probe design was used from single-sample research models. The study was conducted in a special rehabilitation center. Participants of the study were 3 boys and 1 girl, four children with autism, aged between 6-9 years. Within the scope of the study, four social activities have been developed in which humanoid robot and children could interact. The study lasted for three weeks and each week 20-minute sessions were held for each student. Video footages and semi-structured interview forms developed by the researchers were used as data collection tools. Video footage of the third trial was analyzed to determine the interaction level of the robot and the children. In addition, the content analysis of the interviews with the families was conducted. The interaction level scores of the students were calculated and it was concluded that there was a high interaction between the robot and autism with children. This result is parallel with similar studies in the literature.

Keywords

• Autism,humanoid robots,interaction,interaction level

Otizmli Çocukların Eğitiminde Robot Yardımcılar: Robot ve Çocuk Arasındaki Etkileşim

Abstract

Bu çalışmada insansı robot ile otizmli çocukların arasındaki etkileşim incelenmiştir. Araştırmada tek denekli araştırma modellerinden denekler arası çoklu yoklama deseni kullanılmıştır. Araştırma özel bir rehabilitasyon merkezinde gerçekleştirilmiştir. Araştırmanın katılımcıları yaşları 6-9 arasında değişen 3 erkek ve 1 kız, dört otizmli çocuktur.  Araştırma kapsamında insansı robot ve çocukların etkileşime girebileceği dört sosyal etkinlik geliştirilmiştir. Çalışma üç hafta sürmüştür ve her hafta her bir öğrenci için 20’şer dakikalık oturumlar düzenlenmiştir. Veri toplama aracı olarak denemelerde yapılan video kayıtları ve araştırmacılar tarafından geliştirilen yarı yapılandırılmış görüşme formları kullanılmıştır. Üçüncü denemedeki video kayıtları analiz edilerek robot ile çocukların etkileşim düzeyi belirlenmiştir. Ayrıca ailelerle yapılan görüşmelerin içerik analizi yapılmıştır. Öğrencilerin etkileşim düzey puanları hesaplanmış ve elde edilen verilerin değerlendirilmesiyle robot ile otizmli çocuklar arasında yüksek bir etkileşim olduğu sonucuna ulaşılmıştır. Bu sonuç alanyazındaki benzer çalışmalarla da paralellik göstermektedir.

Keywords

• Otizm,insansı robotlar,etkileşim,etkileşim düzeyi

References

1. Adolphs, R. (2003). Cognitive neuroscience of human social behaviour. Nat Rev Neurosci, 4(3), 165-78.
2. American Psychiatric Association. (2001). Work Group on Borderline Personality Disorder. Practice guideline for the treatment of patients with borderline personality disorder. American Psychiatric Pub. 2015].
3. Anzalone, S. M., Xavier, J., Boucenna, S., Billeci, L., Narzisi, A., Muratori, F., ... & Chetouani, M. (2018). Quantifying patterns of joint attention during human-robot interactions: An application for autism spectrum disorder assessment. Pattern Recognition Letters.
4. Aresti-Bartolome, N., Garcia-Zapirain, B., 2014. Technologies as support tools for persons with autistic spectrum disorder: a systematic review. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 11 (8), 7767—7802.
5. Argyle, M., &, Cook, M. (1976). Gaze and mutual gaze. Oxford, NY: Cambridge University Press.
6. Aviezer, H., Hassin, R. R., Ryan, J., Grady, C., Susskind, J., Anderson, A., ... & Bentin, S. (2008). Angry, disgusted, or afraid? Studies on the malleability of emotion perception. Psychological Science, 19(7), 724-732.
7. Bakeman, R., (1986). Observing interaction: an introduction to sequential analysis. Cambridge University Press.
8. Bancroft, W. J. (1995). Research in Nonverbal Communication and Its Relationship to Pedagogy and Suggestopedia. ERIC.

9. Barnett, K. (1972). A theoretical construct of the concepts of touch as they relate to nursing. Nursing research, 21(2), 102-109.
10. Barnhill, G. P., Polloway, E. A., & Sumutka, B.M. (2011). A Survey of Personnel Preparation Practices in Autism Spectrum Disorders. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, 26(2), 75-86.
11. Bauminger, N., Shulman, C., & Agam, G. (2003). Peer interaction and loneliness in high-functioning children with autism. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 33(5), 489-507.
12. Bekele, E., Crittendon, J. A., Swanson, A., Sarkar, N., & Warren, Z. E. (2014). Pilot clinical application of an adaptive robotic system for young children with autism. Autism, 18(5), 598-608.
13. Calder, A. J., & Young, A. W. (2005). Understanding the recognition of facial identity and facial expression. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6(8), 641-651.
14. Capps, L., Sigman, M., & Yirmiya, N. (1995). Self-competence and emotional understanding in high-functioning children with autism. Development and Psychopathology, 7(01), 137–149.
15. Charlop, M. H., Dennis, B., Carpenter, M. H., & Greenberg, A. L. (2010). Teaching socially expressive behaviors to children with autism through video modeling. Education & Treatment of Children, 33(3), 371-393.
16. Coeckelbergh, M., Pop, C., Simut, R., Peca, A., Pintea, S., David, D., Vanderborght, B., 2016. A survey of expectations about the role of robots in robot-assisted therapy for children with ASD: ethical acceptability, trust, sociability, appearance, and attachment. Sci. Eng. Ethics 22, 47—65.
17. Costa, S., Santos, C., Soares, F., Ferreira, M., & Moreira, F. (2010). Promoting interaction amongst autistic adolescents using robots. In Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 2010 Annual International Conference of the IEEE (pp. 3856-3859). IEEE August, 2010. Retrieved: 12.05.2015 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=5627905
18. Costa, S., Lehmann, H., Robins, B., Dautenhahn, K., & Soares, F. (2013). “Where is your nose?”: developing body awareness skills among children with autism using a humanoid robot. In ACHI 2013: The Sixth International Conference on Advances in Computer-Human Interactions. Retrieved: 12.05.2018 Retrieved from: http://repositorium.sdum.uminho.pt/bitstream/1822/26038/1/achi_2013_5_20_20249.pdf
19. Costa, S., Lehmann, H., Dautenhahn, K., Robins, B., & Soares, F. (2015). Using a humanoid robot to elicit body awareness and appropriate physical interaction in children with autism. International Journal of Social Robotics, 7(2), 265-278.
20. Dautenhahn, K. (1999) Robots as social actors: aurora and the case of autism. In Proceedings. CT99, the 3rd international cognitive technology conference, August, San-Francisco, pp 359–374.
21. Dautenhahn, K. (2000). Design issues on interactive environments for children with autism. In Proceedings of the third international conference on disability, virtual reality and associated technologies (ICDVRAT 2000). The University of Reading, pp 153–161.
22. Dautenhahn, K. (2003). Roles and functions of robots in human society: implications from research in autism therapy. Robotica, 21(4), 443-452.
23. Dautenhahn, K. (2007). Methodology and themes of human-robot interaction: A growing research field. International Journal of Advanced Robotics Systems, 4(1), 103–108.
24. Dautenhahn, K., & Werry, I. (2000). Issues of robot-human interaction dynamics in the rehabilitation of children with autism. In Proceedings from animals to animats, the 6th international conference on the simulation of adaptive behavior (SAB2000). 11–15 September 2000. Paris, France, 519–528.
25. Dautenhahn, K., & Werry, I. (2002). A quantitative technique for analysing robot-human interactions. In Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2002. IEEE/RSJ International Conference Vol. 2, 1132-1138. IEEE.Dautenhahn, K., & Werry, I. (2004). Towards interactive robots in autism therapy: Background, motivation and challenges. Pragmatics and Cognition, 12(1), 1-35.
26. Duquette, A., Michaud, F., & Mercier, H. (2008). Exploring the use of a mobile robot as an imitation agent with children with low-functioning autism. Autonomous Robots, 24(2), 147-157.
27. Esteban, P. G., Baxter, P., Belpaeme, T., Billing, E., Cai, H., Cao, H. L., ... & Fang, Y. (2017). How to build a supervised autonomous system for robot-enhanced therapy for children with autism spectrum disorder. Paladyn, Journal of Behavioral Robotics, 8(1), 18-38.
28. Feil-Seifer, D., & Matarić, M. J. (2009). Toward Socially Assistive Robotics for Augmenting Interventions for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. In O. Khatib, V. Kumar, and G. J. Pappas (Eds.), Experimental Robotics (Vol. 54, pp. 201-210). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg. Retrieved: 12.05.2018, Retrieved from: http://www.springerlink.com/content/12k004r536p73nl6/
29. Ferrari, E., Robins, B., & Dautenhahn, K. (2009). Therapeutic and educational objectives in robot assisted play for children with autism. In Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2009. RO-MAN 2009. The 18th IEEE International Symposium on (pp. 108-114). IEEE. Retrieved: 12.05.2018, Retrieved from: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=5326251
30. Field, T. (2001). Touch. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
31. Fombonne, E. (2005). The changing epidemiology of autism. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 18(4), 281-294.
32. Fong, T., Nourbakhsh, I., & Dautenhahn, K. (2003). A survey of socially interactive robots. Robotics and autonomous systems, 42(3), 143-166.
33. Fridin, M. (2014). Kindergarten social assistive robot: First meeting and ethical issues. Computers in Human Behavior, 30, 262-272.
34. Goodrich, M. A., & Schultz, A. C. (2007). Human-robot interaction: A survey. Foundations and Trends in Human-Computer Interaction, 1(3), 203–275.
35. Greczek, J., Atrash, A., & Matarić, M. (2013). A computational model of graded cueing: Robots encouraging behavior change. In HCI International 2013-Posters’ Extended Abstracts, 582-586. Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
36. Hedges, S. H., Odom, S. L., Hume, K., & Sam, A. (2018). Technology use as a support tool by secondary students with autism. Autism, 22(1), 70-79.
37. Hergüner, S., & Hergüner, A. (2011). Otistik Bozukluğu Olan Çocuk ve Ergenlerde Kolesterol Düzeyleri. Selçuk Üniversitesi Tıp Dergisi, 27(4), 226-228.
38. Hertenstein, M.J. (2002). Touch: its communicative functions in infancy. Human Development 45, 70–94.
39. Hoevenaars-van den Boom, M. A. A., Antonissen, A. C. F. M., Knoors, H., & Vervloed, M. P. J. (2009). Differentiating characteristics of deafblindness and autism in people with congenital deafblindness and profound intellectual disability. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 53(6), 548-558.
40. Ingersoll, B., & Dvortcsak, A. (2010). Teaching social communication to children with autism: A practitioner's guide to parents training. New York: The Guilford Press.
41. Ismail, L. I., Shamsudin, S., Yussof, H., Hanapiah, F. A., & Zahari, N. I. (2012). Robot-based intervention program for autistic children with humanoid robot NAO: initial response in stereotyped behavior. Procedia Engineering, 41, 1441-1447.
42. Jordan, R. (1999) Autistic spectrum disorders: an introductory handbook for practitioners. David Fulton, London
43. Kanda, T., Hirano, T., Eaton, D., & Ishiguro, H. (2004). Interactive robots as social partners and peer tutors for children: A field trial. Human-computer interaction, 19(1), 61-84.
44. Kanner, L. (1943). Autistic disturbances of affective contact. Nervous Child, 2, 217-250.
45. Keren, G., Ben-David, A., and Fridin, M. (2012). Kindergarten assistive robotics (KAR) as a tool for spatial cognition development in pre-school education. In Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2012 IEEE/RSJ International Conference, 1084-1089. IEEE
46. Kırcaali-İftar, G. (2007). Otizm spektrum bozukluğu. İstanbul: Daktylos Yayınları.
47. Kıcaali-Iftar, G. & Tekin, E. (1997). Tek denekli araştırma yöntemleri. Ankara: Türk Psikologlar Derneği Yayınları.
48. King, M. D., & Bearman, P. S. (2011). Socioeconomic status and the increased prevalence of autism in California. American sociological review, 76(2), 320-346.
49. Kozima, H., Nakagawa, C., & Yasuda, Y. (2005). Interactive robots for communication-care: A case-study in autism therapy. In Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2005. ROMAN 2005. IEEE International Workshop, 341-346. IEEE. Retrieved: 12.05.2018. Retrieved from: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1513802
50. Kozima, H., Nakagawa, C., & Yasuda, Y. (2007). Children–robot interaction: a pilot study in autism therapy. Progress in Brain Research, 164, 385-400.
51. Kozima, H., Michalowski, M. P., & Nakagawa, C. (2009). Keepon: A playful robot for research, therapy, and entertainment. International journal of Social Robotics, 1(l), 3-18.
52. Laarhoven, T. V., Johnson, J. W., Laarhoven-Myers, T. V., Grider, K. L., & Grider, K. M. (2009). The effectiveness of using a video ipod as a prompting device in employment settings. Journal of Behavioral Education, 18, 119-141.
53. Li, H., Cabibihan, J.J. & Tan, Y.K. (2011). Towards an effective design of social robots. International Journal of Social Robotics, 3(4), 333–335.
54. Loveland, K. A., Tunali-Kotoski, B., Chen, Y. R., Ortegon, J. P. D., Brelsfrod, K. A., & Gibbs, M. C. (1997). Emotion recognition in autism: Verbal and nonverbal information. Development and Psychopathology, 9, 579–593.
55. Mesibov, G. B., Shea, V., & Schopler, E. (2004). The TEACCH approach to autism spectrum disorders. Springer Science and Business Media. New York, NY: Plenum Press.
56. Michaud, F., & Théberge-Turmel, C. (2002). Mobile robotic toys and autism: observations of interactions. In Socially Intelligent Agents, 125-132. Springer US.
57. Michaud, F., Duquette, A., & Nadeau, I. (2003). Characteristics of mobile robotic toys for children with pervasive developmental disorders. In Systems, Man and Cybernetics, 2003. IEEE International Conference Vol 3, 2938-2943. IEEE. Retrieved: 12.05.2018, Retrieved from: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1244338
58. Mutlu, B., Forlizzi, J., & Hodgins, J. (2006). A storytelling robot: Modeling and evaluation of human-like gaze behavior. In Humanoid Robots, 2006 6th IEEE-RAS International Conference, 518-523. IEEE.
59. Myles, B. S. (2007). Autism spectrum disorders: a handbook for parents and professionals. Greenwood Publishing Group.
60. NAS, (2005). National Autistic Society UK, Retrieved: 14.05.2018, Retrieved from: http://www.nas.org.ukPennisi, P., Tonacci, A., Tartarisco, G., Billeci, L., Ruta, L., Gangemi, S., Pioggia, G., (2016). Autism and social robotics: a systematic review. Autism Res. 9 (2), 165-183.
61. Rahimi, M., & Karwowski, W. (1992). Human-robot interaction. Taylor and Francis, Inc..
62. Ricks, D. J., & Colton, M. B. (2010). Trends and considerations in robot-assisted autism therapy. In Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2010 IEEE International Conference, 4354-4359. IEEE. Retrieved: 12.05.2018. Retrieved from: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=5509327
63. Robins, B., Dickerson, P., Stribling, P., & Dautenhahn, K. (2004). Robot-mediated joint attention in children with autism: A case study in robot-human interaction. Interaction studies, 5(2), 161-198.
64. Robins, B., Dautenhahn, K., Te Boekhorst, R., & Billard, A. (2005). Robotic assistants in therapy and education of children with autism: can a small humanoid robot help encourage social interaction skills?. Universal Access in the Information Society, 4(2), 105-120.
65. Robins, Ben, & Kerstin Dautenhahn. (2007). Encouraging social interaction skills in children with autism playing with robots. Enfance, 59.1: 72-81.
66. Robins, B., Dautenhahn, K., & Dickerson, P. (2009). From isolation to communication: a case study evaluation of robot assisted play for children with autism with a minimally expressive humanoid robot. In Advances in Computer-Human Interactions, 2009. ACHI'09. Second International Conferences. 205-211. IEEE.
67. Ryan, J. B., Hughes, E. M., Katsiyannis, A., McDaniel, M., & Sprinkle, C. (2011). Research-based educational practices for students with autism spectrum disorders. Teaching Exceptional Children, 43(3), 56.
68. Scassellati, B. (2007). How social robots will help us to diagnose, treat, and understand autism. In Robotics research, Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
69. Scassellati, B., Admoni, H., & Matarić, M. (2012). Robots for use in autism research. Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering, 14, 275-294.
70. Schiavone, G., Formica, D., Taffoni, F., Campolo, D., Guglielmelli, E. and Keller, F. (2011). Multimodal ecological technology: from child’s social behavior assessment to child–robot interaction improvement. International Journal of Social Robotics, 3(1), 69–81.
71. Shackman, J.E., Pollak, S.D. (2005). Experiential influences on multimodal perception of emotion. Child Development, 76, 1116–1126.
72. Sigman, M., and Ruskin, E. (1999). Continuity and change in the social competence of children with autism, Downs syndrome, and developmental delays. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 64(1), 109-113.
73. Tapus, A., Peca, A., Aly, A., Pop, C., Jisa, L., Pintea, S., ... & David, D. O. (2012). Children with autism social engagement in interaction with Nao, an imitative robot: A series of single case experiments. Interaction studies, 13(3), 315-347.
74. Ülke-Kürkçüoğlu, B. (2007). Otistik özellik gösteren çocuklara birebir öğretimde etkinlikler içi ve arası seçim fırsatları sunmanın etkilerinin karşılaştırılması. (Unpublished doctoral thesis), Anadolu Üniversitesi, Eskişehir.
75. Wainer, J., Dautenhahn, K., Robins, B., & Amirabdollahian, F. (2014). A pilot study with a novel setup for collaborative play of the humanoid robot KASPAR with children with autism. International Journal of Social Robotics, 6(1), 45-65.
76. Yun, S. S., Choi, J., Park, S. K., Bong, G. Y., & Yoo, H. (2017). Social skills training for children with autism spectrum disorder using a robotic behavioral intervention system. Autism Research, 10(7), 1306-1323.
77. Zimmerman, A.W. (2008). Autism: Current theories and evidence. Springer Science and Business Media. Baltimore.