Attention shifting during child-robot interaction: a preliminary clinical study for children with autism spectrum disorder

There is an increasing need to introduce socially interactive robots as a means of assistance in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) treatment and rehabilitation, to improve the effectiveness of rehabilitation training and the diversification of treatment, and to alleviate the shortage of medical personnel in mainland China and other places in the world. In this preliminary clinical study, three different socially interactive robots with different appearances and functionalities were tested in therapy-like settings in four different rehabilitation facilities/institutions in Shenzhen, China. Seventy-four participants, including 52 children with ASD, whose processes of interacting with robots were recorded by three different cameras, all received a single-session three-robot intervention. Data were collected from not only the videos recorded, but also the questionnaires filled mostly by parents of the participants. Some insights from the preliminary results were obtained. These can contribute to the research on physical robot design and evaluations on robots in therapy-like settings. First, when doing physical robot design, some preferential focus should be on aspects of appearances and functionalities. Second, attention analysis using algorithms such as estimation of the directions of gaze and head posture of a child in the video clips can be adopted to quantitatively measure the prosocial behaviors and actions (e.g., attention shifting from one particular robot to other robots) of the children. Third, observing and calculating the frequency of the time children spend on exploring/playing with the robots in the video clips can be adopted to qualitatively analyze such behaviors and actions. Limitations of the present study are also presented.