Evaluating Social Robot Mediation to Develop Emotional Skills in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

What this Trial Is About

Autism Spectrum Disorder is a neurodevelopmental condition that affects social interaction, communication, and behavior patterns. Emotional regulation is a key developmental skill often challenging for children with autism, leading to increased social and behavioral difficulties over time. This research aims to evaluate how a human-assisted social robot can support social-emotional understanding in children with autism by comparing robot-mediated training with traditional therapy. The study involves two groups of children aged 5 to 10 years. One group receives training using a social robot called NAO, while the other group undergoes traditional therapy. Both interventions are divided into four stages: emotion recognition through a "Mime Game," associating emotions with social situations via the "How do I feel when...?" game, differentiating emotions from thoughts using the "Think-Feel Game," and learning useful thoughts related to emotions. The robot and therapist provide instructions and prompts during these activities. Participants will complete tests measuring emotional vocabulary and emotion comprehension, each lasting about 15 to 20 minutes. Researchers will assess how well the children learn emotional skills through these interventions. The study focuses on children with language abilities in sentences, event narration skills, and specific developmental assessment scores. Safety and progress are monitored throughout the study period, which covers the training and evaluation phases.

Emotional Skills Training with Social Robot