Abstract:

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) suffer from a characteristic impairment in the ability to interpret social cues, and they often fail to use social gaze in empathetic and joint-attention tasks. The behavioral ability to follow the gaze of an adult’s eyes, which emerges at around the age of six months in typically developing children, is accepted as being the starting point for the skill of engaging in joint attention. Studies report that children with ASD, as compared to typically developing children and children with developmental delay, display lower joint attention skills and fail to look towards or follow the direction that others look towards or point at. Related studies have further shown that joint attention behavior attempts and actual performance of joint attention are taught either by addressing them as a separate skill set or together, as a whole.

With today’s technological and scientific advancements, the use of robotics has appeared as a new approach in ASD treatment. Several differently designed social robots have been created to boost motivation in children with ASD and to facilitate a simpler and more predictable controlled environment, whereby the levels of stress these children with ASD experience in complex situations involving their social environments can be decreased. The use of social robots in teaching joint attention skills has, as of recently, been gaining attraction. This paper aims to present the current research trends on ASD, focusing specifically on the use of robots in improving joint attention skills and on the characteristics of these robots. With the vast amount of research that has been conducted on this subject, a systematic review approach is used to synthesize the findings.

According to the results of this review, social robotics could be a promising method for ASD treatment. It is important to note, however, that studies have reported different results about the use of robotics in teaching joint attention skills to children with ASD, meaning that there is no conclusive evidence on the extent to which robot therapy contributes to students’ joint attention improvement. While the effectiveness of the use of robotics in teaching joint attention skills to children with ASD has been frequently studied, only rarely comparative studies have been conducted on this subject, and those that have been performed have largely reported positive, yet at times, conflicting results. There has only been one study that specifically compared humans and robotics. Despite the disparity seen in the results reported on the use of robotics in developing joint attention skills in children with ASD, robotics are, nonetheless, widely believed to contribute significantly to the development of joint attention interactions, particularly insofar as the social robots are able to attract the children’s interest, facilitate their participation in activities, form a bond for social interaction, motivate them, provide natural stimuli, and show different emotional expressions. However, further studies involving larger sample sizes are needed to generalize the current study results. Moreover, experimental studies that use more reliable and valid statistical software and that describe the application process in a clearer way should be carried out. Finally, these suggested studies should look at the child-robot interaction in a more comprehensive manner, one that goes beyond the simple therapeutic role of the robot.

Keywords:

Autism spectrum disorder, ASD, joint attention, robots, social robot.