Skip to main content

The Sound of Actuators in Children with ASD, Beneficial or Disruptive?

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Social Robotics (ICSR 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 13818))

Included in the following conference series:

  • 1318 Accesses

Abstract

It is often overlooked in human-robot gestural interactions that, robot produce sound when they move. That aspect might be either beneficial or detrimental to the interaction, but it should be taken into account, especially in the context of robot-assisted therapy.

In this paper, we therefore considered sensory perception in the case of typically developing children and children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders and designed a pilot study with twenty participants to evaluate the impact the sound of actuators has on a rhythmic gestural interaction. Participants were asked to perform a waving-like gesture back at a robot in three different conditions: with visual perception only, auditory perception only and both perceptions. We analyze coordination performance and focus of gaze in each condition. Preliminary results indicate that the sound of actuators might be beneficial for children with autism and only slightly disruptive for typically developing children.

M. Jouaiti and E. Zehnder—These authors contributed equally.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.softbankrobotics.com/emea/en/pepper.

  2. 2.

    https://www.teaergo.com/products/tea-captiv-t-sens-motion-imu/.

  3. 3.

    https://github.com/antoinelame/GazeTracking.

References

  1. Bartlett, N.R., Bartlett, S.C.: Synchronization of a motor response with an anticipated sensory event. Psychol. Rev. 66(4), 203 (1959)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Bogdashina, O.: Sensory Perceptual Issues in Autism and Asperger Syndrome: Different Sensory Experiences-different Perceptual Worlds. Jessica Kingsley Publishers (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Dunlap, K.: Reaction to rhythmic stimuli with attempt to synchronize. Psycholog. Rev. 17(6), 399 (1910)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Fraisse, P.: Auditory rhythms and visual rhythms. Ann. Psychol. 49, 21–42 (1948)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Fujimoto, I., Matsumoto, T., De Silva, P.R.S., Kobayashi, M., Higashi, M.: Mimicking and evaluating human motion to improve the imitation skill of children with autism through a robot. Int. J. Soc. Robot. 3(4), 349–357 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Gault, R.H., Goodfellow, L.D.: An empirical comparison of audition, vision, and touch in the discrimination of temporal patterns and ability to reproduce them. J. Gen. Psychol. 18(1), 41–47 (1938)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Goldfarb, W.: Receptor preferences in schizophrenic children. AMA Arch. Neurol. Psychiatry 76(6), 643–652 (1956)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Goldfarb, W.: Self-awareness in schizophrenic children. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 8(1), 47–60 (1963)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Guneysu, A., Siyli, R.D., Salah, A.A.: Auto-evaluation of motion imitation in a child-robot imitation game for upper arm rehabilitation. In: The 23rd IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2014 RO-MAN, pp. 199–204. IEEE (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Hermelin, B., O’Connor, N.: Effects of sensory input and sensory dominance on severely disturbed, autistic children and on subnormal controls. Br. J. Psychol. 55(2), 201–206 (1964)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Hermelin, B., O’connor, N.: Psychological experiments with autistic children (1970)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Hidaka, S., Ide, M.: Sound can suppress visual perception. Tech. rep., Sci. Rep. 5, 10483 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Jaśkowski, P., Jaroszyk, F., Hojan-Jezierska, D.: Temporal-order judgments and reaction time for stimuli of different modalities. Psychol. Res. 52(1), 35–38 (1990)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Jouaiti, M., Henaff, P.: The sound of actuators: disturbance in human-robot interactions? In: Joint IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and Epigenetic Robotics (ICDL-EpiRob), pp. 75–80 (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Kolers, P.A., Brewster, J.M.: Rhythms and responses. J. Exper. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 11(2), 150 (1985)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Lachaux, J.P., Rodriguez, E., Martinerie, J., Varela, F.J., et al.: Measuring phase synchrony in brain signals. Hum. brain Mapp. 8(4), 194–208 (1999)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. O’Connor, N., Hermelin, B.: Sensory dominance: in autistic imbecile children and controls. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 12(1), 99–103 (1965)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. O’Connor, N.: Visual perception in autistic children. Infantile autism: Concepts, characteristics and treatment. London: Churchill Livingstone (1971)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Ornitz, E.M., Ritvo, E.R.: Perceptual inconstancy in early infantile autism: the syndrome of early infant autism and its variants including certain cases of childhood schizophrenia. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 18(1), 76–98 (1968)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Pandey, A.K., Gelin, R.: A mass-produced sociable humanoid robot: pepper: the first machine of its kind. IEEE Robot. Autom. Mag. 25(3), 40–48 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Posner, M.I., Nissen, M.J., Klein, R.M.: Visual dominance: an information-processing account of its origins and significance. Psychol. Rev. 83(2), 157 (1976)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Renshaw, S.: The errors of cutaneous localization and the effect of practice on the localizing movement in children and adults. Pedagog. Seminary J. Gen. Psychol. 38(1–4), 223–238 (1930)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Repp, B.H., Penel, A.: Auditory dominance in temporal processing: new evidence from synchronization with simultaneous visual and auditory sequences. J. Exper. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 28(5), 1085 (2002)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Schopler, E.: Early infantile autism and receptor processes. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 13(4), 327–335 (1965)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Srinivasan, S.M., Lynch, K.A., Bubela, D.J., Gifford, T.D., Bhat, A.N.: Effect of interactions between a child and a robot on the imitation and praxis performance of typically devloping children and a child with autism: A preliminary study. Percept. Motor Skills 116(3), 885–904 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Suteerawattananon, M., Morris, G., Etnyre, B., Jankovic, J., Protas, E.: Effects of visual and auditory cues on gait in individuals with parkinson’s disease. J. Neurolog. Sci. 219(1–2), 63–69 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Vroomen, J., Gelder, B.D.: Sound enhances visual perception: cross-modal effects of auditory organization on vision. J. Exper. Psychol. Hum. Perception Perform. 26(5), 1583 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Welch, R.B.: Meaning, attention, and the unity assumption in the intersensory bias of spatial and temporal perceptions. In: Advances in psychology, vol. 129, pp. 371–387. Elsevier (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Zaporozhets, A.: The origin and development of the conscious control of movements in man. In: Recent Soviet Psychology. Liveright New York (1961)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank all the children and parents who willingly took part in this study and filled in so many questionnaires.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Eloise Zehnder .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Jouaiti, M., Zehnder, E., Charpillet, F. (2022). The Sound of Actuators in Children with ASD, Beneficial or Disruptive?. In: Cavallo, F., et al. Social Robotics. ICSR 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13818. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24670-8_4

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24670-8_4

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-24669-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-24670-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics