This episode features a comprehensive discussion of research examining socially assisted robotics for children with autism. Madeline Jürgensen presents findings from two single-case design studies that investigated whether children with autism would attend to and learn from a small humanoid robot called Kebbi. The first study used a multiple baseline design to measure attending behaviors, revealing dramatic increases in eye contact and engagement when children worked with the robot versus human instructors. The second study employed an adaptive alternating treatment design to compare learning outcomes between robot and human instruction, finding that while children learned academic skills from both modalities, they showed preference for robot-delivered activities despite sometimes performing better with human instruction. The discussion includes important considerations about the novelty effect, social validity, and the future role of robotics in behavior analysis practice. 

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Show Notes

References:  

Berens, K. N. (2020). Blind spots: Why students fail and the science that can save them. Oakland, CA: The Collective Book Studio. 

Darling, K. (2021). The new breed: What our history with animals reveals about our future with robots. Henry Holt and Company. 

Shi, Z., Groechel, T. R., Jain, S., Chima, K., Rudovic, O., & Matarić, M. J. (2022). Toward personalized affect-aware socially assistive robot tutors for long-term interventions with children with autism. Journal of Human-Robot Interaction, 11(4), Article 39. https://doi.org/10.1145/3526111 

Resources:  

• Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI): https://www.abainternational.org/ 

• CentralReach Institute: https://centralreach.com/ 

• University of Southern California Robotics and Autonomous Systems Center (RASC): https://rasc.usc.edu/research/ 

 

If you would like a copy of the articles discussed please reach out to [email protected]