27769
Autism Characteristics, Adaptive Skills, and Performance in an Emotion-Recognition Teaching Programme with a Humanoid Robot

Poster Presentation
Friday, May 11, 2018: 10:00 AM-1:30 PM
Hall Grote Zaal (de Doelen ICC Rotterdam)
A. M. Alcorn1, D. Girard2, E. Ainger1, T. Tavassoli3, S. Babović Dimitrijevic4, S. Petrović4, S. Skendžić4, V. Petrović4, E. Pellicano5 and C. De-Enigma6, (1)Centre for Research in Autism and Education, University College London, London, United Kingdom, (2)Psychology, University of Quebec in Montreal, Montréal, QC, Canada, (3)Centre for Autism, School of Psychology & Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom, (4)Serbian Society of Autism, Belgrade, Serbia, (5)Centre for Research in Autism and Education (CRAE), UCL Institute of Education, University College London, London, United Kingdom, (6)DE-ENIGMA project consortium, Enschede, Netherlands
Background: Several existing projects have shown promise in using robot-assisted interventions for teaching social and academic skills to autistic children, including emotion recognition. Most such work, however, has included older, so-called ‘high functioning’ autistic children and has therefore neglected to address the feasibility of robot-assisted emotion interventions for young autistic children, those with intellectual disability, or limited spoken language. Given claims that robot-assisted interventions could present lower, less complex social demands than human-led interventions, it is particularly important to investigate their feasibility for children whose social, daily life, or language skills may present barriers to participation in “traditional” interventions.

Objectives: This project tested the feasibility of an emotion-recognition training programme in developing the potential of robot-assisted interventions for a large sample of autistic children in Serbia and in the UK.

Methods: 128 autistic children aged 5-12 years were assessed in a 6-step emotion-training programme based on “Teaching Children with Autism to Mind Read” (Howlin, Baron-Cohen, & Hadwin, 1999). In the robot-assisted condition (n=64, 10 females), a Robokind R25 humanoid robot (“Zeno”; see Figure 1) helped to deliver the programme controlled covertly by the adult, whilst 64 children (9 females) participated in the therapist-assisted comparison condition. Parents completed the Vineland Adaptive Behaviour Scales – 2nd edition (Sparrow et al., 2005), and researchers completed the CARS2-ST (Schopler et al., 2010) based on direct observation and parent information.

Results: Children in the robot- and therapist-assisted conditions were closely matched on autism severity and adaptive behaviours (Table 1). Emotion recognition performance, operationalised as the proportion of correct answers in steps 1-2 of Howlin et al.’s emotion-training programme, was inversely correlated with CARS-2 scores in both the robot-assisted (r = -.40, p < .001) and therapist-assisted conditions (r = -.47, p < .001). Higher Vineland composite scores (i.e. better adaptive behaviours) were significantly positively correlated with task performance for children in the therapist-assisted (r = .38, p < .01), but not the robot-assisted condition (r = .16, p = .27). Using the Vineland communication subscale as a proxy for language skills, better language was positively associated with performance in both conditions, but more strongly for the children in the therapist-assisted (r = .50, p < .001) than in the robot-assisted condition (r = .28, p < .05).

Conclusions: This study examined the relationship between everyday adaptive behaviours and emotion recognition performance within robot-assisted and therapist-assisted activities, as part of establishing the feasibility of using such interventions with a younger and less able participants than those studied thus far. Results suggest that while it is generally feasible for this group to participate, individual performance moderately correlated with lower CARS-2 scores and higher adaptive behaviour and language scores, but less so in the robot-assisted condition. This pattern may support claims that robots impose lower social demands, or are less complex to work with than a person. This study was the first phase of data collection for a large-scale project, with further studies iteratively developing a new robot-assisted emotion teaching intervention.