Application of Robotics in Autistic Students: A Pilot Study on Attention in Communication and Social Interaction

Abstract

In today’s societies, technology occupies a central position in different social spheres. In educational environments, robotics can act as an assistive tool for students with disabilities. More specifically, this tool helps autistic students in the development of attention, which is the fundamental skill in the cognitive and social development of the child, in activities in social contexts that are less stressful than human-human interaction. In this line, the aim of the study is to explore the application of robotics to favour communication and social interaction of autistic students, analysing attention. To this end, a pilot study was designed with the NAO robot in which four autistic students carried out activities related to imitation, play and social interaction. For data collection, the field notebook and an automatic system based on neural networks were used to calculate the child’s attention during the activity. The results show that 75% of the subjects focus their attention on the robot during the interaction. Therefore, it is concluded that the robot acts as an activator of attention and social interaction in the tasks developed.