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A Hybrid Robotics System for Children with Autism: A longitudinal Study of Social Interaction inside the Classroom

Published: 25 August 2022 Publication History

Abstract

In our longitudinal (20 weeks) and empirical study (i.e., conducted in natural settings inside a specific classroom with 9 children with ASD), we used a hybrid robotics system (i.e. Cozmo©) to investigate the evolution of the behaviors and gestures of the children in this sample when performing specific activities with this robot, in order to test if a hybrid system can support behaviors related to joint attention and social exchanges. Our study is based on observations of collaborative activities performed by children with ASD with/against the Cozmo© robot during educational settings in ecological contexts. Analyses showed that children point less and less frequently toward the hybrid robotics system, touch the robot less and less frequently while three behaviors and gestures increase significantly through the interactions with the robot and through the weeks: children touch the cubes more and more frequently, they point more and more frequently toward peers and joint attention is more and more frequent. In other words, because these three behaviors are directly related to social exchanges and communication, our results tend to demonstrate that joint attention and the interest of children are more and more focused on the other children (i.e. peers) and the activities performed together by using a hybrid robotics system.

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  • (2024)Social Robots: A Promising Tool to Support People with Autism. A Systematic Review of Recent Research and Critical Analysis from the Clinical PerspectiveReview Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders10.1007/s40489-024-00434-5Online publication date: 29-Feb-2024

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  1. A Hybrid Robotics System for Children with Autism: A longitudinal Study of Social Interaction inside the Classroom

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    cover image ACM Other conferences
    ErgoIA '21: Proceedings of the 17th “Ergonomie et Informatique Avancée” Conference
    October 2021
    74 pages
    ISBN:9781450385121
    DOI:10.1145/3486812
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 25 August 2022

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    Author Tags

    1. Autism Spectrum Disorder
    2. Educational settings
    3. Robotics
    4. Social competencies

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    • (2024)Social Robots: A Promising Tool to Support People with Autism. A Systematic Review of Recent Research and Critical Analysis from the Clinical PerspectiveReview Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders10.1007/s40489-024-00434-5Online publication date: 29-Feb-2024

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