Social Distance in Interactions between Children with Autism and Robots

The use of non-industrial robots, called service robots, is increasing in the welfare fields to meet the demand for robot therapy among individuals with autism. The more simple communication structures and repetitive behaviors of robots, compared to humans, make it easier for children with autism to interpret communication and respond appropriately. Interacting with a robot allows for social distance to be designed and maintained depending on a person’s social interaction needs. To simulate natural social interactions, robots need to perform social distance in some way. In the context of interacting with autistic children, understanding their social response levels is crucial for the robot to implement decisions regarding the distance kept during the interaction. In this study, an experiment was conducted to examine the accuracy of a detection program and explore the correlations between the social responsiveness of children and social distance, wherein 15 autistic children interacted with a robot on a one-to-one basis for about 20 min. The results revealed that both programs implemented in the robot-assisted autism therapy were effective in detecting social distance in a natural HRI situation.

Leveraging video data from a digital smartphone autism therapy to train an emotion detection classifier

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting one in 40 children in the United States and is associated with impaired social interactions, restricted interests, and repetitive behaviors. Previous studies have demonstrated the promise of applying mobile systems with real-time emotion recognition to autism therapy, but existing platforms have shown limited performance on videos of children with ASD. We propose the development of a new emotion classifier designed specifically for pediatric populations, trained with images crowdsourced from an educational mobile charades-style game: Guess What?. We crowdsourced the acquisition of videos of children portraying emotions during remote game sessions of Guess What? that yielded 6,344 frames from fifteen subjects. Two raters manually labeled the frames with four of the Ekman universal emotions (happy, scared, angry, sad), a neutral class, and n/a for frames with an indeterminable label. The data were pre-processed, and a model was trained with a transfer-learning and neural-architecture-search approach using the Google Cloud AutoML Vision API. The resulting classifier was evaluated against existing approaches (Azure Face API from Microsoft and Rekognition from Amazon Web Services) using the standard metrics of F1 score. The resulting classifier demonstrated superior performance across all evaluated emotions, supporting our hypothesis that a model trained with a pediatric dataset would outperform existing emotion-recognition approaches for the population of interest. These results suggest a new strategy to develop precision therapy for autism at home by integrating the model trained with a personalized dataset to the mobile game.

A Long-Term Engagement with a Social Robot for Autism Therapy

Social robots are increasingly being used as a mediator between a therapist and a child in autism therapy studies. In this context, most behavioural interventions are typically short-term in nature. This paper describes a long-term study that was conducted with 11 children diagnosed with either Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) or ASD in co-occurrence with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). It uses a quantitative analysis based on behavioural measures, including engagement, valence, and eye gaze duration. Each child interacted with a robot on several occasions in which each therapy session was customized to a child’s reaction to robot behaviours. This paper presents a set of robot behaviours that were implemented with the goal to offer a variety of activities to be suitable for diverse forms of autism. Therefore, each child experienced an individualized robot-assisted therapy that was tailored according to the therapist’s knowledge and judgement. The statistical analyses showed that the proposed therapy managed to sustain children’s engagement. In addition, sessions containing familiar activities kept children more engaged compared to those sessions containing unfamiliar activities. The results of the interviews with parents and therapists are discussed in terms of therapy recommendations. The paper concludes with some reflections on the current study as well as suggestions for future studies.

Robot-Assisted Autism Therapy (RAAT). Criteria and Types of Experiments Using Anthropomorphic and Zoomorphic Robots. Review of the Research

Supporting the development of a child with autism is a multi-profile therapeutic work on disturbed areas, especially understanding and linguistic expression used in social communication and development of social contacts. Previous studies show that it is possible to perform some therapy using a robot. This article is a synthesis review of the literature on research with the use of robots in the therapy of children with the diagnosis of early childhood autism. The review includes scientific journals from 2005–2021. Using descriptors: ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorders), Social robots, and Robot-based interventions, an analysis of available research in PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science was done. The results showed that a robot seems to be a great tool that encourages contact and involvement in joint activities. The review of the literature indicates the potential value of the use of robots in the therapy of people with autism as a facilitator in social contacts. Robot-Assisted Autism Therapy (RAAT) can encourage child to talk or do exercises. In the second aspect (prompting during a conversation), a robot encourages eye contact and suggests possible answers, e.g., during free conversation with a peer. In the third aspect (teaching, entertainment), the robot could play with autistic children in games supporting the development of joint attention. These types of games stimulate the development of motor skills and orientation in the body schema. In future work, a validation test would be desirable to check whether children with ASD are able to do the same with a real person by learning distrust and cheating the robot.

NVivo based Al-Quranic features in students for autism therapy

In 2018, according to data from the CDC in America, it is estimated that 1 in 59 children prevalence (incidence rate) of children have Autism Spectrum Disorder, compared to 2014, which is 1 in 68 children increased by 15%. The average boy often experiences unique symptoms, the problem is on the spectrum of neural development and can affect all sorts of aspects of learning, although many researchers focus on aspects of related issues but are measured to lack emphasis. So it is done on the learning of problems associated with religious education, read the Qur'an lovingly and also pray (?al??). Non-Arab speakers with autism, this study aims to characterize the natural characteristics displayed by a special student (autistic) in reading the Quran. To provide the same opportunity in carrying out their religious obligations, an 8-year-old boy from Malay with autism is already high, for a month with a session conducted three times the program was chosen as the subject. At least during the six months of Al-Quran lessons and he was able to communicate orally in class. NVivo software is useful for this analysis and it was found that every experimental session was recorded by audio by a digital camera and a digital camera visual voice recorder. the first chapter test includes reading the Quran (al-Fatihah) using five different types: (a) Malay Translation, (b and c) the complete set of chapters in Uthmani and Rasm Qiyasi races respectively, and ( d and e) sets of disorganized and incomplete chapters in Uthmani rasm. Research Autistic individuals for the selection of appropriate recommended reading materials. Teachers and parents for effectiveness in studying the Quran need to be considered, This identifies the features that have been shown during the lessons of the Quran.

Autism, Therapy and COVID-19

While numerous treatments for ASD are available, intervention based on the principles and procedures of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) has garnered substantial scientific support. In this study we evaluated the effects of the lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, followed by quarantine provisions and during the three months after the resumption of activities. The study was conducted on a group of children taking part on a ABA-based intervention funded by the Local Health Authority (ASL) of the province of Caserta. In this study we considered a sample of 88 children who had been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, aged between 18 and 30 months. The following inclusion criteria were observed: age at the time of diagnosis less than 30 months, absence of other neurological, genetic, or sensorineural pathologies, and severity level 1 measured by symptoms evaluation based on the ADOS 2 module T (used for diagnosis). During the lockdown children experienced improvements in communication, socialization, and personal autonomy. During the three months after the ABA treatment, the acquired skills were maintained but no significant improvement was demonstrated. In this study, we describe how parent training was significant in avoiding delays in the generalization of socially significant behaviors, following the drastic interruption of the treatment in this group of children.

PERANCANGAN INTERIOR PUSAT PELAYANAN DAN TERAPI ANAK AUTISME DI KOTA DENPASAR

Autism spectrum disorder or autism is a disruption circumstance of undeveloped brains affecting patient’s abilities in communicating and social interacting with others. Autism resulted in patient’s misbehaviour and limited patient’s interest. In some cases, some children having difficulties in interacting or communicating; they have their own world and abandoned social environment; therefore, it is called autism spectrum disorder or autism. The fact that some parents have not realized the autism symptoms on their children as well as being late in putting them in particular treatments is due to less inclusive facilities in Bali, particularly in Denpasar City, such as therapies room and other related facilities. An inclusive facility for autism children patients, and designing a room in accordance with the theme and concept taken by Methamorphoo with the concept of the Harmonious Line Of Scandinavian. In this design, some therapy rooms are provided including behavioral therapy including occupational therapy and ABA, speech therapy, physiotherapy therapy, play therapy, swimming therapy, transition classes and self development classes, it is expected this design is able to meet the therapeutic needs for autism children. Keywords: Interior, Autism, Therapy, Design

Perspektif Orangtua Terkait Kemandirian Anak Autis Pada Aspek Sosial

Autism in children has several symptoms such as being unable to socialize, having difficulty using language, behaving repeatedly and reacting abnormally to stimuli. The purpose of this study was to describe the perspective of parents regarding the autonomy of children with autism in the social aspects of Soeprapto mental hospital, Bengkulu. This study used a qualitative descriptive method with a research sample of 10 informants and 4 autistic therapists. Data were obtained from interviews and observations. The results of the study obtained information from the social aspect of the child that they are willing to play with their peers and interact with the surrounding environment, are afraid of meeting people they do not know, ask to be welcomed when they meet close people such as father, mother and caregiver, but still many children who take autism therapy have not achieved a significant level of independence. This is due to the level of obedience of children with autism in following therapy or learning provided by therapists and support from children's families who only rely on the education provided by the therapist. In conclusion, the autonomy of children with autism has not reached a significant level of independence based on the parents' perspective. It is hoped that the results of this study can be input for educational institutions and related parties (therapists) as information and knowledge about the autonomy of children with autism from a social aspect. Keywords: Autistic Children, Social Independence, Parents' Perspective

Diagnosis of Autism using Machine Learning as a Healthcare Technology

Autism is one of the inborn disease, researchers are presently focusing on. The autistic child faces inflexibility in language, thinking and behavior together with the difficulties in understanding emotional states of others. There are lot of interventions going on to make them understand the feelings of others and vice-versa. Now a day, ASD became one of the quick spreading diseases all over the world. Therefore there is a huge need to provide a time-consuming and easy accessible diagnostic tool to detect autism at an early stage to help the clinicians in providing prior medications. Though there is no proper curability of autism, still easy detection helps to provide better therapy session and supports the autistic child to lead a comfort independent life. The thesis deals with the building up of a model where the parents and relatives of a suspected autistic child can easily detect if they are suffering from autism by providing their answers of some particular questions related to the characteristics of autism. In order to build that model, the data were collected manually from different autism therapy centers in India and those raw data are then classified by using three different classifiers namely Logistic Regression, Support Vector Machine and Random Forest with Python as a programming tool to find out the one with higher accuracy by various analyses after pre-processing. The Random Forest classifier with the highest accuracy is utilized in framing the question based model for the early discovery of autism which can be operated as a primary diagnostic model to assist medical professionals technologically