Human–Robot Interaction in Autism Treatment: A Case Study on Three Pairs of Autistic Children as Twins, Siblings, and Classmates

In this paper, three pairs of children with autism include a pair of twins, two siblings, and two classmates were enrolled in a 12-session robot-assisted group-games program. As many environmental factors were for the most part the same for the siblings as well as genetic factors for the twins, we were able to observe/compare the effect of the designed games on the participants individually and in paired-groups. The results indicated that all participants’ autism severity decreased after the course of the program. Improvement in social skills, social participation/avoidance, and detrimental social behaviors were also observed in the participants with high-functioning autism with close to being large Cohen’s d effect sizes. Moreover, based on the video coders’ observations the joint attention, gaze scores toward the robot, and verbal communications of the paired-groups increased significantly over the treatment time (p<0.05\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$p<0.05$$\end{document}). However, in general, the designed program effect on the subjects’ behavior seems to be different for participants from different points on the autism spectrum; and even the high-functioning subjects showed different potential behavioral progress.