Abstract
In recent years robots have been increasingly used in autism research. In this paper the effects of robot-assisted interventions on two seven year old autistic twin brothers, one of whom is high-functioning and the other low-functioning, are explored. To this end, 12 sessions of therapeutic scenarios were designed and presented to the autistic twin subjects in the presence of two robots, a therapist and their parents in individual and group modes. The results showed great potential benefits from using robots in group therapeutic games in both high- and low- functioning autistic children, such as improvement in imitation and joint attention skills for both brothers, as well as communication with each other. The results also indicated a decrease of stereotyped behaviors in the low-functioning brother, and improvement in social and cognitive skills in the high-functioning brother.
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Taheri, A., Alemi, M., Meghdari, A., Pouretemad, H., Basiri, N.M., Poorgoldooz, P. (2015). Impact of Humanoid Social Robots on Treatment of a Pair of Iranian Autistic Twins. In: Tapus, A., André, E., Martin, JC., Ferland, F., Ammi, M. (eds) Social Robotics. ICSR 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9388. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25554-5_62
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25554-5_62
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