Jammo virtual robot enhances the social skills of children with HFA: Development and deployment

Abstract

This study investigates the impact of combining virtual environment with a social VRobot as a novel approach to train the social skills of children with high-functioning autism (HFA). A 3D social virtual robot is used in a non-immersive (desktop) virtual environment to enhance the social skills of children with HFA through a social skills training program guided by a parent or a teacher. The motivation of this research is to provide a tool that can be widely accessible, cheap, and easily used by parents and teachers either at home or school. The training program targets three social skills: imitation, emotion recognition, and expression, and intransitive gestures skills. Experimental sessions were conducted with 15 children with HFA (4-12 years) both online and on-site. The participants were taught to recognize six basic emotions and 11 intransitive gestures (Phase I), to imitate these emotions and gestures (Phase II), and to produce them inappropriate social contexts (Phase III). Across all the three phases for each skill, significant differences were found between the pre-test, post-test, and follow-up test results.