A Novel Reinforcement-Based Paradigm for Children to Teach the Humanoid Kaspar Robot

© The Author(s) 2019. This is the final published version of an article published in Psychological Research, licensed under a Creative Commons Attri-bution 4.0 International License. Available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-019-00607-xThis paper presents a contribution to the active field of robotics research with the aim of supporting the development of social and collaborative skills of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). We present a novel experiment where the classical roles are reversed: in this scenario the children are the teachers providing positive or negative reinforcement to the Kaspar robot in order for the robot to learn arbitrary associations between different toy names and the locations where they are positioned. The objective of this work is to develop games which help children with ASD develop collaborative skills and also provide them tangible example to understand that sometimes learning requires several repetitions. To facilitate this game we developed a reinforcement learning algorithm enabling Kaspar to verbally convey its level of uncertainty during the learning process, so as to better inform the children interacting with Kaspar the reasons behind the successes and failures made by the robot. Overall, 30 Typically Developing (TD) children aged between 7 and 8 (19 girls, 11 boys) and 6 children with ASD performed 22 sessions (16 for TD; 6 for ASD) of the experiment in groups, and managed to teach Kaspar all associations in 2 to 7 trials. During the course of study Kaspar only made rare unexpected associations (2 perseverative errors and 1 win-shift, within a total of 272 trials), primarily due to exploratory choices, and eventually reached minimal uncertainty. Thus the robot's behavior was clear and consistent for the children, who all expressed enthusiasm in the experiment.Peer reviewe

A novel paradigm for children as teachers to the Kaspar robot learner

This paper presents a contribution to the active field of robotics research to support the development of social skills and capabilities in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders as well as Typically Developing children. We present preliminary results of a novel experiment where classical roles are reversed: children are here the teachers giving positive or negative reinforcement to the Kaspar robot to make it learn arbitrary associations between toys and locations where to tidy them. The goal is to help children change perspective, and understand that sometimes a learning agent needs several repetitions before correctly learning something. We developed a reinforcement learning algorithm enabling Kaspar to verbally convey its uncertainty along learning, so as to better inform the interacting child of the reasons behind successes and failures made by the robot. Overall, 30 children aged between 7 and 8 (19 girls, 11 boys) performed 16 sessions of the experiment in groups, and managed to teach Kaspar all associations in 2 to 7 trials. Kaspar only made a few unexpected associations, mostly due to exploratory choices, and eventually reached minimal uncertainty. All children expressed enthusiasm in the experiment

Psychophysiological analysis of a pedagogical agent and robotic peer for individuals with autism spectrum disorders.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by ongoing problems in social interaction and communication, and engagement in repetitive behaviors. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 1 in 68 children in the United States has ASD. Mounting evidence shows that many of these individuals display an interest in social interaction with computers and robots and, in general, feel comfortable spending time in such environments. It is known that the subtlety and unpredictability of people’s social behavior are intimidating and confusing for many individuals with ASD. Computerized learning environments and robots, however, prepare a predictable, dependable, and less complicated environment, where the interaction complexity can be adjusted so as to account for these individuals’ needs. The first phase of this dissertation presents an artificial-intelligence-based tutoring system which uses an interactive computer character as a pedagogical agent (PA) that simulates a human tutor teaching sight word reading to individuals with ASD. This phase examines the efficacy of an instructional package comprised of an autonomous pedagogical agent, automatic speech recognition, and an evidence-based instructional procedure referred to as constant time delay (CTD). A concurrent multiple-baseline across-participants design is used to evaluate the efficacy of intervention. Additionally, post-treatment probes are conducted to assess maintenance and generalization. The results suggest that all three participants acquired and maintained new sight words and demonstrated generalized responding. The second phase of this dissertation describes the augmentation of the tutoring system developed in the first phase with an autonomous humanoid robot which serves the instructional role of a peer for the student. In this tutoring paradigm, the robot adopts a peer metaphor, where its function is to act as a peer. With the introduction of the robotic peer (RP), the traditional dyadic interaction in tutoring systems is augmented to a novel triadic interaction in order to enhance the social richness of the tutoring system, and to facilitate learning through peer observation. This phase evaluates the feasibility and effects of using PA-delivered sight word instruction, based on a CTD procedure, within a small-group arrangement including a student with ASD and the robotic peer. A multiple-probe design across word sets, replicated across three participants, is used to evaluate the efficacy of intervention. The findings illustrate that all three participants acquired, maintained, and generalized all the words targeted for instruction. Furthermore, they learned a high percentage (94.44% on average) of the non-target words exclusively instructed to the RP. The data show that not only did the participants learn nontargeted words by observing the instruction to the RP but they also acquired their target words more efficiently and with less errors by the addition of an observational component to the direct instruction. The third and fourth phases of this dissertation focus on physiology-based modeling of the participants’ affective experiences during naturalistic interaction with the developed tutoring system. While computers and robots have begun to co-exist with humans and cooperatively share various tasks; they are still deficient in interpreting and responding to humans as emotional beings. Wearable biosensors that can be used for computerized emotion recognition offer great potential for addressing this issue. The third phase presents a Bluetooth-enabled eyewear – EmotiGO – for unobtrusive acquisition of a set of physiological signals, i.e., skin conductivity, photoplethysmography, and skin temperature, which can be used as autonomic readouts of emotions. EmotiGO is unobtrusive and sufficiently lightweight to be worn comfortably without interfering with the users’ usual activities. This phase presents the architecture of the device and results from testing that verify its effectiveness against an FDA-approved system for physiological measurement. The fourth and final phase attempts to model the students’ engagement levels using their physiological signals collected with EmotiGO during naturalistic interaction with the tutoring system developed in the second phase. Several physiological indices are extracted from each of the signals. The students’ engagement levels during the interaction with the tutoring system are rated by two trained coders using the video recordings of the instructional sessions. Supervised pattern recognition algorithms are subsequently used to map the physiological indices to the engagement scores. The results indicate that the trained models are successful at classifying participants’ engagement levels with the mean classification accuracy of 86.50%. These models are an important step toward an intelligent tutoring system that can dynamically adapt its pedagogical strategies to the affective needs of learners with ASD

The use of Analog and Digital Games for Autism Interventions

Many interventions that target improvements in social communication and other cognitive, learning, and physical issues have been developed to help autistic people. The gamification of interventions offers an alternative approach to fostering and assessing desired behaviors and cognitions in a more naturalistic and emergent setting. In this scoping review aimed at educators, practitioners, and parents of those with autism, we detail studies that have tested game-based approaches to improving the lives of autistic children, adolescents, and adults, focusing on how research into gamification and autism can both progress and can be progressed and implemented. We offer parents, professionals and academics resources to incorporate game-based psycho-educational programs into their current practice

Affective robotics for socio-emotional development in children with autism spectrum disorders

Tese de doutoramento do Programa Doutoral em Engenharia Eletrónica e de ComputadoresAutism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are a group of complex developmental disorders of the brain. Individuals affected by this disorder are characterized by repetitive patterns of behaviour, restricted activities or interests, and impairments in social communication. The use of robots had already been proven to encourage the promotion of social interaction and skills lacking in children with ASD. The main goal of this thesis is to study the influence of humanoid robots to develop socio-emotional skills in children with ASD. The investigation demonstrates the potential benefits a robotic tool provides to attract the attention of children with ASD, and therefore use that focus to develop further skills. The main focus of this thesis is divided into three topics. The first topic concerns the use of a robot to encourage learning appropriate physical social engagement, and to facilitate the ability to acquire knowledge about human body parts. The results show that the robot proved to be a useful tool, attracting the children’s attention and improving their knowledge about human body parts. The second topic regards the process of designing game scenarios to be used with children with ASD, targeting the promotion of emotion recognition skills. Three game scenarios were developed based on the expertise of professionals and they were successfully tested in pilot studies. Finally, the last topic presents two child-robot interaction studies with a large sample. They examine the use of a humanoid robot as a tool to teach recognition and labelling of emotions. The first study focuses on verbal and non-verbal communicative behaviours as measures to evaluate the social interaction and children interacting with the robot displayed more non-verbal behaviours indicating social engagement. The second study analyses the children’s attention patterns, and the children’s performance in the game scenarios previously designed. Along the sessions, the children increased their eye contact with the experimenter and in the study comparing the use of the robot with a traditional intervention, children who performed the game scenarios with the robot and the experimenter had a significantly better performance than the children who performed the game scenarios without the robot. The main conclusions of this research support that a humanoid robot is a useful tool to develop socio-emotional skills in the intervention of children with ASD, due to the engagement and positive learning outcome observed.As Perturbações do Espectro do Autismo (PEA) são um distúrbio complexo do desenvolvimento do cérebro. Os indivíduos afetados por esse transtorno são caracterizados por padrões repetitivos do comportamento, atividades ou interesses restritos e dificuldades na comunicação social. A utilização de robôs já provou ser um estímulo promovendo a interação social e competências em falta nestes indivíduos. O objetivo principal desta tese é estudar a influência de robôs humanoides para desenvolver competências sócio emocionais em crianças com PEA. A investigação demonstra os potenciais benefícios de uma ferramenta robótica para atrair a atenção de crianças com PEA e utilizar esta atenção para desenvolver outras competências. O foco principal desta tese está dividido em três tópicos. O primeiro tópico consiste na utilização de um robô para incentivar a aprendizagem sobre a interação físico-social apropriada e para facilitar a aquisição de conhecimento sobre partes do corpo. Os resultados mostram que o robô provou ser uma ferramenta útil, atraindo a atenção das crianças e melhorando o seu conhecimento sobre partes do corpo. A segunda parte refere-se ao processo de construção de atividades para serem utilizadas com crianças com PEA, promovendo competências de reconhecimento de emoções. Três atividades foram desenvolvidas com base na opinião de profissionais e foram testadas em estudo piloto com sucesso. Finalmente, o último tópico apresenta dois estudos de interação criança-robô examinando a utilização de um robô humanoide como ferramenta para ensinar reconhecimento e identificação de emoções. O primeiro estudo foca a comunicação verbal e não-verbal como medidas de avaliação da interação social e as crianças que interagiram com o robô mostraram mais comportamentos não-verbais que indicam interação social. O segundo estudo analisa os padrões de atenção e o desempenho das crianças nas atividades concebidas anteriormente. Ao longo das sessões, as crianças aumentaram o contacto ocular com o experimentador e no estudo que comparou a utilização do robô com intervenção tradicional, as crianças que realizaram as atividades com o robô e o experimentador tiveram um desempenho significativamente melhor do que as crianças que realizaram as ativdades sem o robô. As conclusões principais desta investigação suportam que um robô humanoide foi uma ferramenta útil para desenvolver competências sócio emocionais na intervenção de crianças com PEA, devido à interação e resultados positivos de aprendizagem observados.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) in the scope of the project: PEst-OE/EEI/UI0319/2014.This work was performed in part under the R&D project RIPD/ADA/109407/2009.SFRH/BD/71600/2010 scholarship