Interactive mirrOring Games wIth sOCial rObot (IOGIOCO): a pilot study on the use of intransitive gestures in a sample of Italian preschool children with autism spectrum disorder.
Robot mirroring games are doable for preschoolers with ASD and can lift social skills, but only if the child clears the first easy level.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers in Italy built a 14-week robot game for preschoolers with autism.
Kids copied silly hand and face moves shown by a small NAO robot.
Ten children tried it; only four moved past the warm-up level.
The team tracked social skills before, after, and six months later.
What they found
All ten kids stayed in the study and liked the robot.
The four who reached full mirroring gained social adaptive skills.
Six months later these gains were still there.
The other six stayed at the hello-robot stage and showed no clear change.
How this fits with other research
Stieglitz Ham et al. (2008) saw older, higher-functioning kids fail at meaningless gestures.
The new study flips that: younger kids with ASD can learn gestures if a robot teaches them step-by-step.
Age and task setup explain the clash, not a true contradiction.
Shire et al. (2020) also boosted social play in toddlers by adding peers to JASPER sessions.
Both papers show social growth is possible before age five, whether the partner is a peer or a robot.
Chetcuti et al. (2019) warned that hard motor moves block imitation in preschool ASD; the robot kept moves simple, probably helping the four who advanced.
Why it matters
You now have a low-cost script: use a small robot, start with easy waves, and let the child set the pace.
If the child copies three moves in one session, keep going; if not, pause and try later.
Track social adaptive scores each month to see real change.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by persistent deficits in social communication, social interaction, and restricted behaviors. The importance of early intervention has been widely demonstrated, and developmental trajectories in ASD emphasize the importance of nonverbal communication, such as intransitive gesture production, as a possible positive prognostic factor for language development. The use of technological tools in the therapy of individuals with ASD has also become increasingly important due to their higher engagement and responsiveness to technological objects, such as robots. We developed a training protocol using the humanoid robot NAO, called IOGIOCO (Interactive mirroring Games wIth sOCial rObot), based on the use of intransitive gestures embedded in naturalistic dialogues, stimulating a triadic interaction between child, robot and therapist. The training was divided into six levels; the first 2 levels were called “familiarization levels,” and the other 4 were “training levels”. The technological setup includes different complexity levels, from mirroring tasks to building spontaneous interactions. We tested the protocol on 10 preschool children with ASD (aged 2–6 years) for 14 weeks. We assessed them at recruitment (T0), at the end of training (T1), and after 6 months (T2). We demonstrated the tolerability of the protocol. We found that one group (n=4, males and 2 females) reached the training level, while another and group (n=6 males) remained at a familiarization level (mirroring), we analyzed the results for the two groups. In the group that reached the training levels, we found promising results, such as an improvement in the Social Adaptive Domain of the ABAS-II questionnaire between T0 and T2. While current results will need a Randomized Controlled Trial to be confirmed, the present work sets an important milestone in using social robots for ASD treatment, aimed at impacting social and communication skills in everyday life.
Frontiers in Psychiatry, 2024 · doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1356331