期刊名称：International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems
印刷版ISSN：1729-8806
电子版ISSN：1729-8814
出版年度：2012
卷号：9
DOI：10.5772/51128
语种：English
出版社：SAGE Publications
摘要：This study explores the response of autistic children to a few design features of the robots for autism therapy and provides suggestions on the robot features that have a stronger influence on the therapeutic process. First, we investigate the effect of selected robot features on the development of social communication skills in autistic children. The results indicate that the toy’s “face” and “moving limb” usually draw the children’s attention and improve children’s facial expression skills, but do not contribute to the development of other social communication skills. Secondly, we study the response of children with low-functioning autism to robots with verbal communication functionalities. Test results show that children interacted with the verbal-featured robot more intensively than with the experimenter. We conclude that robots with faces and moving limbs can engage autistic children in a better way. Facial expression of the robots can elicit a greater response than prompting by humans.
