Department of Biomedical Engineering, Rochester Institute of Technology, 160 Lomb Memorial Drive, Building 73, Rochester, NY, 14623, USA.
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Vanderbilt University, Olin Hall Room 101, 2400 Highland Avenue, Nashville, TN, 37212, USA.
J Autism Dev Disord. 2020 Aug;50(8):2819-2831. doi: 10.1007/s10803-020-04388-5.
Although there has been growing interest in utilizing robots for intervention in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), there have been very few controlled trials to assess the actual impacts of such systems on social communication vulnerabilities. This study reports a randomized controlled trial to investigate a robot-mediated response to joint attention intervention in a small (23 recruited; 20 completed) group of young children (average age = 2.54 years) with ASD. Small and nonsignificant group differences were observed regarding improvements in response to joint attention skills within and beyond the intervention. The sample showed tremendous individual variability in response to the system. Results highlight the current challenges related to developing pragmatic, beneficial, and generalizable robotic intervention systems for the targeted population.
尽管人们对利用机器人干预自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）越来越感兴趣，但很少有对照试验来评估此类系统对社交沟通障碍的实际影响。本研究报告了一项随机对照试验，以调查机器人介导的对共同关注干预的反应，该试验涉及一小部分（招募了 23 名；完成了 20 名）患有 ASD 的幼儿。在干预内和干预外，对共同关注技能的反应方面，观察到小组差异较小且无统计学意义。该样本对系统的反应表现出极大的个体差异。结果突出了当前在为目标人群开发实用、有益和可推广的机器人干预系统方面所面临的挑战。
