AbstractThis article describes a long-term study evaluating the use of the humanoid robot Kaspar in a specialist nursery for children with autism. The robot was used as a tool in the hands of teachers or volunteers, in the absence of the research team on-site. On average each child spent 16.53 months in the study. Staff and volunteers at the nursery were trained in using Kaspar and were using it in their day-to-day activities in the nursery. Our study combines an “in the wild” approach with a rigorous approach of collecting and including users’ feedback during an iterative evaluation and design cycle of the robot. This article focuses on the design of the study and the results from several interviews with the robot’s users. We also show results from the children’s developmental assessments by the teachers prior to and after the study. Results suggest a marked beneficial effect for the children from interacting with Kaspar. We highlight the challenges of transferring experimental technologies like Kaspar from a research setting into everyday practice in general and making it part of the day-to-day running of a nursery school in particular. Feedback from users led subsequently to many changes being made to Kaspar’s hardware and software. This type of invaluable feedback can only be gained in such long-term field studies.

Young autistic children are amongst the most scrutinised and assessed in their everyday lives, often leading to characterisations and descriptions that focus on their difficulties and challenges rather than on their abilities, strengths and positive experiences. Consequently, much discussion about autistic children tends to forget that they are children first. While research has considered the transitions of autistic children from primary to secondary school, and from secondary to post-compulsory contexts, there is almost no research focusing on transitions for young autistic children from nursery to primary schools. There is also very limited representation of their voices and experiences being explored, promoted, and valued directly as evidence in their own right. We aimed to address this gap through a project funded by the Froebel Trust and co-constructed with practitioners and families. The project used an innovative Digital Storytelling methodology to explore the experiences and perspectives of five 4-year-old autistic children, and their families, as the children prepared to make the transition from an inclusive day nursery to primary school. This paper provides an overview of the rationale, methodology, and findings of the project to address two related questions: How do we listen to those children who ‘have no words’?; and what do we learn from them when we do?

Previous studies conducted with the humanoid robot Kaspar in the UK have yielded many encouraging results. This paper examines the influence of conducting play sessions with Kaspar on the social and communication skills of children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC) and suggests possible ways for using the robot as a (therapeutic) tool in a Greek school for children with special needs. Over a period of 10 weeks 7 children took part in a total of 111 individual play sessions with the Kaspar robot. Each child participated in between 12 and 18 sessions with the robot. The results from this study indicate that the play sessions with Kaspar appear to have positively influenced the behaviours of some of the children in specific domains such as communication and interaction, prompted speech, unprompted imitation and focus/attention. Furthermore, the children’s teachers expressed positive views regarding the impact of the play sessions on the children and offered interesting suggestions about the ways in which the robot could potentially be used in everyday teaching tasks and were eager to obtain a Kaspar for their classroom activities.

There is good evidence that children's prosocial skills are positively associated with health, well-being, and academic outcomes. Games-based approaches have demonstrated strong potential for teaching prosocial skills in both digital and non-digital formats. However, much of this research focuses on middle-childhood and adolescence and is based on self-reports from teachers, children, and parents. This paper reports on the pilot evaluation of a digital cooperative game (The Chase), which is based on a 'shared goal' interaction pattern such that children have to cooperate in order to be successful in the game. 49 children from Italy and 22 children from the UK, aged 7-10 years participated, playing the game twice in small groups during the course of a day. Children's moves during gameplay were assessed using logging data, and their interactions with each other represented using a graphical social network analysis. Usability feedback was also obtained from some children and pedagogical possibilities explored with teachers. Findings show that even within a very short period children shifted towards a more cooperative mode of play. The social network analysis revealed the dynamics of these interactions while playing the game. Children enjoyed the game and were highly motivated by it, and teachers were very enthusiastic about the possibilities for embedding the game in their curriculum. These findings provide an encouraging basis for extending the range of digital prosocial games available for elementary-aged children and evaluating these as pedagogical tools for facilitating prosocial behaviours.