Measuring Engagement in Robot-Assisted Therapy for Autistic Children
Children with autism face a range of challenges when it comes to verbal and nonverbal communication. It is essential that children participate in a variety of social, educational, and therapeutic activities to acquire knowledge that is essential for cognitive and social development. Recent studies h...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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MDPI AG
2023-07-01
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| Series: | Behavioral Sciences |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/13/8/618 |
| _version_ | 1797585453577142272 |
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| author | Abeer Al-Nafjan Noura Alhakbani Amal Alabdulkareem |
| author_facet | Abeer Al-Nafjan Noura Alhakbani Amal Alabdulkareem |
| author_sort | Abeer Al-Nafjan |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Children with autism face a range of challenges when it comes to verbal and nonverbal communication. It is essential that children participate in a variety of social, educational, and therapeutic activities to acquire knowledge that is essential for cognitive and social development. Recent studies have shown that children with autism may be interested in playing with an interactive robot. The robot can engage these children in ways that demonstrate and train essential aspects of human interaction, guiding them in therapeutic sessions to practice more complex forms of interaction found in social human-to-human interactions. This study sets out to investigate Robot-Assisted Autism Therapy (RAAT) and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) approaches for measuring the engagement of children during therapy sessions. The study population consisted of five native Arabic-speaking autistic children aged between 4 and 11 years old. The child–robot interaction was recorded by the robot camera and later used for analysis to detect engagement. The results show that the proposed system offers some accuracy in measuring the engagement of children with ASD. Our findings revealed that robot-assisted therapy is a promising field of application for intelligent social robots, especially to support autistic children in achieving their therapeutic and educational objectives. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-11T00:07:25Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-611c96395df74de4bb435379d07b2ff6 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2076-328X |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-11T00:07:25Z |
| publishDate | 2023-07-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Behavioral Sciences |
| spelling | doaj.art-611c96395df74de4bb435379d07b2ff62023-11-19T00:16:10ZengMDPI AGBehavioral Sciences2076-328X2023-07-0113861810.3390/bs13080618Measuring Engagement in Robot-Assisted Therapy for Autistic ChildrenAbeer Al-Nafjan0Noura Alhakbani1Amal Alabdulkareem2Computer Science Department, College of Computer and Information Sciences, Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University (IMSIU), Riyadh 11432, Saudi ArabiaInformation Technology Department, College of Computer and Information Sciences, King Saud University, Riyadh 11543, Saudi ArabiaInformation Technology Department, College of Computer and Information Sciences, King Saud University, Riyadh 11543, Saudi ArabiaChildren with autism face a range of challenges when it comes to verbal and nonverbal communication. It is essential that children participate in a variety of social, educational, and therapeutic activities to acquire knowledge that is essential for cognitive and social development. Recent studies have shown that children with autism may be interested in playing with an interactive robot. The robot can engage these children in ways that demonstrate and train essential aspects of human interaction, guiding them in therapeutic sessions to practice more complex forms of interaction found in social human-to-human interactions. This study sets out to investigate Robot-Assisted Autism Therapy (RAAT) and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) approaches for measuring the engagement of children during therapy sessions. The study population consisted of five native Arabic-speaking autistic children aged between 4 and 11 years old. The child–robot interaction was recorded by the robot camera and later used for analysis to detect engagement. The results show that the proposed system offers some accuracy in measuring the engagement of children with ASD. Our findings revealed that robot-assisted therapy is a promising field of application for intelligent social robots, especially to support autistic children in achieving their therapeutic and educational objectives.https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/13/8/618robotautismtherapyengagement detectionfacial emotion recognitionconvolutional neural network |
| spellingShingle | Abeer Al-Nafjan Noura Alhakbani Amal Alabdulkareem Measuring Engagement in Robot-Assisted Therapy for Autistic Children Behavioral Sciences robot autism therapy engagement detection facial emotion recognition convolutional neural network |
| title | Measuring Engagement in Robot-Assisted Therapy for Autistic Children |
| title_full | Measuring Engagement in Robot-Assisted Therapy for Autistic Children |
| title_fullStr | Measuring Engagement in Robot-Assisted Therapy for Autistic Children |
| title_full_unstemmed | Measuring Engagement in Robot-Assisted Therapy for Autistic Children |
| title_short | Measuring Engagement in Robot-Assisted Therapy for Autistic Children |
| title_sort | measuring engagement in robot assisted therapy for autistic children |
| topic | robot autism therapy engagement detection facial emotion recognition convolutional neural network |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/13/8/618 |
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