Kostrubiec Viviane, Kruck Jeanne
Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches en Psychopathologie et Psychologie de la Santé (CERPPS), Université de Toulouse, UT2J, Toulouse, France.
Université de Toulouse, UT3, Toulouse, France.
Front Robot AI. 2020 Mar 31;7:37. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2020.00037. eCollection 2020.
The present work is a collaborative research aimed at testing the effectiveness of the robot-assisted intervention administered in real clinical settings by real educators. Social robots dedicated to assisting persons with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are rarely used in clinics. In a collaborative effort to bridge the gap between innovation in research and clinical practice, a team of engineers, clinicians and researchers working in the field of psychology developed and tested a robot-assisted educational intervention for children with low-functioning ASD ( = 20) A total of 14 lessons targeting requesting and turn-taking were elaborated, based on the Pivotal Training Method and principles of Applied Analysis of Behavior. Results showed that sensory rewards provided by the robot elicited more positive reactions than verbal praises from humans. The robot was of greatest benefit to children with a low level of disability. The educators were quite enthusiastic about children's progress in learning basic psychosocial skills from interactions with the robot. The robot nonetheless failed to act as a social mediator, as more prosocial behaviors were observed in the control condition, where instead of interacting with the robot children played with a ball. We discuss how to program robots to the distinct needs of individuals with ASD, how to harness robots' likability in order to enhance social skill learning, and how to arrive at a consensus about the standards of excellence that need to be met in interdisciplinary co-creation research. Our intuition is that robotic assistance, obviously judged as to be positive by educators, may contribute to the dissemination of innovative evidence-based practice for individuals with ASD.
本研究是一项合作研究，旨在测试由真正的教育工作者在实际临床环境中实施的机器人辅助干预的有效性。专门用于帮助自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者的社交机器人在诊所中很少使用。为了弥合研究创新与临床实践之间的差距，一个由工程师、临床医生和心理学领域研究人员组成的团队开发并测试了一种针对低功能ASD儿童（n = 20）的机器人辅助教育干预。基于关键训练方法和行为应用分析原则，精心设计了总共14节针对请求和轮流互动的课程。结果表明，机器人提供的感官奖励比人类的口头表扬引发了更多积极反应。该机器人对残疾程度较低的儿童益处最大。教育工作者对孩子们通过与机器人互动在学习基本社会心理技能方面取得的进步非常热情。然而，该机器人未能起到社会调解人的作用，因为在对照条件下观察到更多的亲社会行为，在对照条件下，孩子们不是与机器人互动，而是玩球。我们讨论了如何根据ASD个体的不同需求对机器人进行编程，如何利用机器人的亲和力来促进社会技能学习，以及如何就跨学科共同创造研究中需要达到的卓越标准达成共识。我们的直觉是，机器人辅助显然被教育工作者判定为积极的，可能有助于为ASD个体传播基于证据的创新实践。
