Training autistic children on joint attention skills with a robot

Abstract

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder have issues with the development of social skills and communication. One such skills is that of joint attention (JA). JA is the sharing of attention between two people in regards to an object. There are two mechanism of JA, initiating joint attention (IJA) and responding to joint attention (RJA). This article details an experiment wherein a social robot was used to train children with ASD on their JA skills. This experiment contained a robot training group and a control group. Both groups’ JA skills were tested before and after training with the robot (or a waiting period for the control group). The groups did not significantly differ on their pre-tests scores for RJA or IJA. The training group had significant improvements in both their IJA and RJA scores, while the control group did not have significant improvements. However, the groups did not significantly differ on their post-test scores for either RJA or IJA.