Hybrid Approach to Promote Social Interaction with Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Vinícius Silva, Filomena Soares, João Esteves, Ana Pereira, Celina Leão, Sandra Queirós

2021

Abstract

The comprehension of the emotional state of others is paramount for a successful human interaction. Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have impairments in social communication and, consequently, they have difficulties to interpret others’ state of mind. In order to tackle this issue, researchers have been proposing the use of technological solutions to assist children with ASD, particularly in imitation and emotion recognition tasks. Social robots and Objects with Playware Technology (OPT) have been employed as intervention tools with children with ASD. This work presents an approach combining both technologies (robots and OPT), in a hybrid way, with the goal of promoting social interaction with children with ASD. Moreover, a new OPT device was developed to be used as an add-on to the human-robot interaction with children with ASD in two emotion recognition tasks – recognize and storytelling. A pilot study was conducted with children with ASD to evaluate the proposed method. All children successfully participated in the activities. Moreover, children significantly gazed longer towards the OPT during the storytelling scenario as the OPT device displayed visual cues, supporting that using a visual cue may be fundamental in helping children with ASD understand requests and tasks.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Silva V., Soares F., Esteves J., Pereira A., Leão C. and Queirós S. (2021). Hybrid Approach to Promote Social Interaction with Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Ageing Well and e-Health - Volume 1: ICT4AWE, ISBN 978-989-758-506-7, pages 69-77. DOI: 10.5220/0010468600690077

in Bibtex Style

@conference{ict4awe21,
author={Vinícius Silva and Filomena Soares and João Esteves and Ana Pereira and Celina Leão and Sandra Queirós},
title={Hybrid Approach to Promote Social Interaction with Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Ageing Well and e-Health - Volume 1: ICT4AWE,},
year={2021},
pages={69-77},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0010468600690077},
isbn={978-989-758-506-7},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Ageing Well and e-Health - Volume 1: ICT4AWE,
TI - Hybrid Approach to Promote Social Interaction with Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
SN - 978-989-758-506-7
AU - Silva V.
AU - Soares F.
AU - Esteves J.
AU - Pereira A.
AU - Leão C.
AU - Queirós S.
PY - 2021
SP - 69
EP - 77
DO - 10.5220/0010468600690077