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Title: Robot-mediated Group Instruction for Children with ASD: A Pilot Study
Children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) typically work towards acquiring skills to participate in a regular classroom setting such as attending and appropriately responding to an instructor’s requests. Social robots have the potential to support children with ASD in learning group-interaction skills. However, the majority of studies that target children with ASD’s interactions with social robots have been limited to one-on-one interactions. Group interaction sessions present unique challenges such as the unpredictable behaviors of the other children participating in the group intervention session and shared attention from the instructor. We present the design of a robot-mediated group interaction intervention for children with ASD to enable them to practice the skills required to participate in a classroom. We also present a study investigating differences in children's learning behaviors during robot-led and human-led group interventions over multiple intervention sessions. Results of this study suggests that children with ASD's learning behaviors are similar during human and robot instruction. Furthermore, preliminary results of this study suggest that a novelty effect was not observed when children interacted with the robot over multiple sessions.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1948224
PAR ID:
10442499
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
2022 31st IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1506 to 1513
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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