Though every person with autism is different, many people on the autism spectrum struggle with social skills. In recent years, the idea of using “social robots” to teach social skills to children with ASD has gained traction.
“Social robots are designed to interact with us,” writes Callum Brodie for Digital Empowers.com. “They are essentially mobile machines that exhibit social behaviours, such as recognizing, following and assisting their owners and even engaging in conversation.”
A new study by researchers at Yale University found that social robots are an effective treatment for children with communication challenges. The study, led by Brian Scassellati, a professor of computer science, found that children with ASD showed marked improvement in their social skills after working with robots 30 minutes a day over a 30 day period. What’s more, the children wanted their work with the robots to continue beyond the timeframe of the study.
According to Yale News, the robots in the study modeled eye contact and other social skills for the 12 children who participated. They also “guided the children … through storytelling and interactive games designed to promote social skills such as emotional understanding, taking turns, and seeing things from others’ perspectives.” Said Scassellati: “The children showed improved performance across the board… This was more than we had hoped; not only did the children and parents still enjoy working with the robot after a month, but the children were showing improvements that persisted even when the robots were not around.”
Scassellati explained that in earlier studies, children who worked with robots made short-term improvements. However, after several days, most lost interest in the robots, and subsequently, their social skills regressed. Yet the robots in the Yale study, which were specially designed to engage the children, held their interests and they steadily improved. As Scassellati told Yale News, “The study represents a significant advance in the lab’s work with social robots….Future studies will aim to give the robots an even more prominent role.”
Scassellati pointed out that children with autism often feel more comfortable interacting with robots than they do with humans. “These are kids who have years of experience with the idea that social interaction is challenging and something they don’t understand,” he said. “When they interact with the robot, though, it triggers social responses but it doesn’t trigger a lot of the other baggage they’ve come to associate with social interaction.”
