Summer Robotics Camp: A Pilot Social/Vocational Intervention for Adolescents with ASD and Their Peers

Background:  Although adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can be academically successful in general education classroom settings, they often experience difficulty making friends, generalizing the social skills that they learn, and maintaining relationships.  Such difficulties, if continued into adulthood without intervention, are likely to lead to social isolation, depression, and social anxiety as well as create obstacles to higher education, employment, and personal relationships.  For individuals with ASD who have developed the requisite social skills, there are limited opportunities to improve social performance in supervised settings (Koegel et al., 2012). 

Objectives:   We piloted a weeklong Summer Robotics Camp designed to improve social performance and increase vocational skills in an environment designed to focus on the intrinsic interests of participants, rather than their social difficulties. The program was based on previous work on improving social performance with elementary school age children with ASD by Koegel et al. (2012).    The objective of the camp was to increase social/vocational development of individuals with ASD through:  (1) a decrease in social anxiety, (2) an increase in social performance, and (3) an increase in robotics knowledge.

Methods:  We recruited 8 individuals with ASD and 8 typically developing (TD) peers, ages 12-17, who received general education science instruction at school, and who expressed an interest in robotics.  ASD diagnoses were independently confirmed using ADOS, SCQ, and clinical judgment.  Participants completed a weeklong summer camp, during which they learned robotic facts, actively programmed an interactive robot, and learned “career skills” (e.g., how to work collaboratively).  For the programming, individuals worked in pairs (1 ASD: 1 TD) on a programming project that culminated in a presentation in front of campmates and family.  Pairs were closely matched on IQ, robotics experience, and age to ensure equal participation in the task.  Participants were not labeled as having ASD; social/vocational training was given to all participants regardless of diagnosis.  Pre- and post-treatment data were collected on: participant-reported levels of social anxiety (Social Anxiety Scale), parent-reported social skills (Social Skills Improvement System), and a test of participants' knowledge of robotics.

Results: A series of paired samples t-test were conducted to compare the baseline data with post-test data.  For both ASD and TD groups, there was a significant improvement on the measures of social anxiety (t=4.09, p<.001) and robotics knowledge (t=10.55, p<.001).  There was no significant improvement on the total scores of parent-reported social skills for either ASD or TD groups (p=.57), although it should be noted that the participants came in with the requisite level of social skills. 

Conclusions: These results provide a preliminary support for the effectiveness of a summer robotics camp at decreasing social anxiety, and improving knowledge of science and robotics in adolescents with ASD.  As an unintended benefit, similar improvements were observed in TD individuals suggesting that benefits of this type of program could extend beyond the treatment group.  Further study is needed to specifically examine the real-time social performance beyond parent-report measures of social skills in order to see if there are improvements in social performance.