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Social Robots and Teaching Music to Autistic Children: Myth or Reality?

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Social Robotics (ICSR 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 9979))

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Abstract

Music-based therapy is an appropriate tool to facilitate multisystem development in children with autism. The focus of this study is to implement a systematic and hierarchical music-based scenario in order to teach the fundamentals of music to children with autism through a social robot. To this end, we have programmed a NAO robot to play the xylophone and the drum. After running our designed robot-assisted clinical interventions on three high-functioning and one low functioning autistic children, fairly promising results have been observed. We indicated that the high-functioning participants have learned how to play the musical notes, short sentences, and simple rhythms. Moreover, the program affected positively on autism severity, fine movement and communication skills of the autistic subjects. The initial results observed indicate promising potentials for involving social robots in music-based autism therapy.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Graphical User Interface .

  2. 2.

    Typically Developing.

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Acknowledgement

Our sincere appreciation is extended to the “Cognitive Sciences and Technologies Council of Iran” for their financial support through research grant # 103. We also acknowledge the “Center for the Treatment of Autistic Disorders (CTAD)” and its psychologists for their technical support and cooperation in participating in the clinical interventions with the children with autism spectrum disorders.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Social & Cognitive Robotics Laboratory, Center of Excellence in Design, Robotics, and Automation (CEDRA), Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

    Alireza Taheri, Ali Meghdari & Minoo Alemi

  2. Islamic Azad University, Tehran-west Branch, Tehran, Iran

    Minoo Alemi

  3. Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences (ICBS), Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran

    Hamidreza Pouretemad

  4. Center for Treatment of Autistic Disorders, Tehran, Iran

    Alireza Taheri, Hamidreza Pouretemad, Pegah Poorgoldooz & Maryam Roohbakhsh

Authors
  1. Alireza Taheri
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  2. Ali Meghdari
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  3. Minoo Alemi
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  4. Hamidreza Pouretemad
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  5. Pegah Poorgoldooz
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  6. Maryam Roohbakhsh
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ali Meghdari .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering, The University of Kansas, Lawrence, Indiana, USA

    Arvin Agah

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar

    John-John Cabibihan

  3. School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA

    Ayanna M. Howard

  4. Department of Systems Engineering and Automation, University Carlos III de Madrid, madrid, Spain

    Miguel A. Salichs

  5. Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Biomedical Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA

    Hongsheng He

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Taheri, A., Meghdari, A., Alemi, M., Pouretemad, H., Poorgoldooz, P., Roohbakhsh, M. (2016). Social Robots and Teaching Music to Autistic Children: Myth or Reality?. In: Agah, A., Cabibihan, JJ., Howard, A., Salichs, M., He, H. (eds) Social Robotics. ICSR 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9979. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47437-3_53

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47437-3_53

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-47436-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-47437-3

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