Brief Report: Evaluating the Utility of Varied Technological Agents to Elicit Social Attention from Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Journal: Journal of autism and developmental disorders
PMID: 30511126

Abstract

Technological agents could be effective tools to be used in interventions for enhancing social orienting for some young children with ASD. We examined response to social bids in preschool children with ASD and typical development (TD) at a very early age (i.e., around 3 years) using social prompts presented by technological agents of various forms and human comparisons. Children with ASD demonstrated less response overall to social bids compared to TD controls, across agents or human. They responded more often to a simple humanoid robot and the simple avatar compared to the human. These results support the potential utilization of specific robotic and technological agents for harnessing and potentially increasing motivation to socially-relevant behaviors in some young children with ASD.

Authors

  • Hirokazu Kumazaki
    Department of Clinical Research on Social Recognition and Memory, Research Center for Child Mental Development, Kanazawa University, Ishikawa, Japan.
  • Zachary Warren
    Department of Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and Special Education, Vanderbilt Kennedy Center, Treatment and Research Institute for Autism Spectrum Disorders, Vanderbilt University, 230 Appleton Pl., Nashville, TN, 37206, USA. zachary.warren@vanderbilt.edu.
  • Amy Swanson
    Vanderbilt Kennedy Center, Treatment and Research Institute for Autism Spectrum Disorders, Vanderbilt University, 230 Appleton Pl., Nashville, TN, 37206, USA.
  • Yuichiro Yoshikawa
    Department of Systems Innovation, Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University, 1-3 Machikaneyama, Toyonaka, Osaka, 560-8531, Japan.
  • Yoshio Matsumoto
    Service Robotics Research Group, Intelligent Systems Institute, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Ibaraki, Japan.
  • Yuko Yoshimura
    Research Center for Child Mental Development, Kanazawa University, 13-1, Takaramachi, Kanazawa, Ishikawa, 920-8640, Japan.
  • Jiro Shimaya
    Department of Systems Innovation, Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University, 1-3, Machikaneryamachou, Toyonaka, Osaka, 560-0043, Japan.
  • Hiroshi Ishiguro
  • Nilanjan Sarkar
  • Joshua Wade
    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.
  • Masaru Mimura
    Department of Neuropsychiatry, Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan.
  • Yoshio Minabe
    Department of Clinical Research on Social Recognition and Memory, Research Center for Child Mental Development, Kanazawa University, Ishikawa, Japan.
  • Mitsuru Kikuchi
    Department of Clinical Research on Social Recognition and Memory, Research Center for Child Mental Development, Kanazawa University, Ishikawa, Japan.

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