Socially Assistive Robotic Instruction for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

The present study acts as preliminary research to examine the use of a socially assistive robot on the educational outcomes of children with mild and severe symptoms of autism spectrum disorder. Participants included three children, ages 5–7 years old, recruited from a public elementary school in the Northeastern United States. The study comprised two distinct conditions using an adapted alternating treatment design. First, a pre-assessment gauged participants proficiency in life skills and science vocabulary, with the aim of selecting of target sets for the intervention. In the human condition, participants engaged in two activities guided by a human instructor, while in the robot condition, they participated in two activities led by a robot instructor. Each condition had one set of life skills vocabulary and one set of science vocabulary. Finally, during the post-assessment phase, participants were re-evaluated using the vocabulary assessment and completed a social validity measure to indicate their preference for either the human or robot instructor. Two of the three children completed all conditions. Findings revealed that both participants successfully acquired all nine vocabulary words across both conditions. However, participants demonstrated faster mastery of the vocabulary in the human compared to the robot condition. Interestingly, despite this difference, both participants expressed a preference for the robot instructor over the human instructor.