. Simut Vanderborght, R., Kerpel, N., Cao, H., Verspecht, S., Vanderborght, B., & Vanderfaeillie, J. Typically developing children and children with autism spectrum disorder in joint attention tasks assisted by social robots. Are social robots an added-value?, pages 1--4. 3, 2017.
abstract   bibtex   
In the last three decades, robots are placed in the picture by media and are becoming more accessible in daily use. They are proposed not only as part of entertainment and education, but also of care, social assistance and therapy. As such, several institutions from industry are buying social assistive robots and start to use them in classrooms or during therapy sessions without having empirical support and thus, no evidence-based protocols to follow. For example, there has been an increasing interest in Robot Assisted Therapy (RAT) for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder ASD (ASD). While there is much declared as being hopeful and exciting about using robots for treating children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), a great variability in responding towards a robot is observed in children with ASD (Feil-Seifer & Matarić, 2011). Also, researchers declare that it will take much research effort before robots become mainstream in intervention. Moreover, experts are advocating caution and express the need to explore the development path of the child-robot relation. Nevertheless, there is a need to focus on which are the roles and how the robots should embrace them in a therapy setting for children with ASD. Therefore, more longitudinal studies are necessary in order to better approach these questions and provide accurate answers. This study will focus on using a social robot with the role of a model, a cool smart peer that will demonstrate joint attention skills for three children with ASD during a long-term intervention program. Each participant was exposed to three phases: baseline measurements, Robot Modeling Intervention (RMI), and baseline measurements. In each phase JA behaviors were assessed three times per week in a naturalistic environment, such as their classroom during the free-play moment. The RMI intervention proved to be effective for some of the targeted behaviors, such as eye contact and pointing, for two of the three participants. However, the results were highly fluctuating across the participants and thus they remain inconclusive. However, this study offers a valuable insight in the field of both ASD intervention and human robot interaction research fields.
@inbook{2b8ba1d2087a42cfbadeb4b2b5af03ea,
  title     = "Typically developing children and children with autism spectrum disorder in joint attention tasks assisted by social robots. Are social robots an added-value?",
  abstract  = "In the last three decades, robots are placed in the picture by media and are becoming more accessible in daily use. They are proposed not only as part of entertainment and education, but also of care, social assistance and therapy. As such, several institutions from industry are buying social assistive robots and start to use them in classrooms or during therapy sessions without having empirical support and thus, no evidence-based protocols to follow. For example, there has been an increasing interest in Robot Assisted Therapy (RAT) for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder ASD (ASD). While there is much declared as being hopeful and exciting about using robots for treating children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), a great variability in responding towards a robot is observed in children with ASD (Feil-Seifer & Matarić, 2011). Also, researchers declare that it will take much research effort before robots become mainstream in intervention. Moreover, experts are advocating caution and express the need to explore the development path of the child-robot relation. Nevertheless, there is a need to focus on which are the roles and how the robots should embrace them in a therapy setting for children with ASD. Therefore, more longitudinal studies are necessary in order to better approach these questions and provide accurate answers. This study will focus on using a social robot with the role of a model, a cool smart peer that will demonstrate joint attention skills for three children with ASD during a long-term intervention program. Each participant was exposed to three phases: baseline measurements, Robot Modeling Intervention (RMI), and baseline measurements. In each phase JA behaviors were assessed three times per week in a naturalistic environment, such as their classroom during the free-play moment. The RMI intervention proved to be effective for some of the targeted behaviors, such as eye contact and pointing, for two of the three participants. However, the results were highly fluctuating across the participants and thus they remain inconclusive. However, this study offers a valuable insight in the field of both ASD intervention and human robot interaction research fields.",
  author    = "{Simut Vanderborght}, Ramona and Noralie Kerpel and Hoang-Long Cao and Shauni Verspecht and Bram Vanderborght and Johan Vanderfaeillie",
  year      = "2017",
  month     = "3",
  pages     = "1--4",
  booktitle = "HRI 2017: workshop Growing-Up Hand in Hand with Robots: Designing and Evaluating Child-Robot Interaction from a Developmental Perspective",
}

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