Effects of Circumscribed Interests on the Social Behaviors of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Boyd, Brian A.; Conroy, Maureen A.; Mancil, G. Richmond; Nakao, Taketo; Alter, Peter

doi:10.1007/s10803-006-0286-8

Cited by 153 publications

(140 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Several investigators have observed that interactions with robots motivate prosocial behaviors and learning in children with ASD (Dautenhahn, 2003;Diehl et al, 2012;Kim et al, 2013). Moreover, it has been noted that the prosocial behaviors gained during interactions with therapeutic robots transfer to real-life interactions with peers and adults (Boyd, Conroy, Mancil, Nakao, & Alter, 2007;Diehl et al, 2012). Perhaps, by drawing on their interest in robots, children with ASD can be motivated and encouraged to collaborate with their typically-developing peers on robot development projects (Kaboski et al, 2015;Wainer, Ferrari, Dautenhahn, & Robins, 2010).…”

Section: Capitalizing On Technology/robotics Interests Among Studentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unconventional Students in Robotics and HRI Education: A Review of Two Initiatives

Zenk¹,

Crowell²,

Villano³

et al. 2017

Journal of Human-Robot Interaction

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Robotics and human-robot interaction (HRI) are growing fields that may benefit from an expanded perspective stimulated by more interdisciplinary contributions. One way to achieve this goal is to attract non-traditional students from the social sciences and humanities into these fields. This present paper describes two educational initiatives that focused on teaching non-engineering students about robotics and HRI. In one initiative, a group of younger students, including those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), received hands-on experience with robotics in a context that was not overly technical, while in the other initiative, college students in the social sciences and humanities learned about basic HRI concepts and developed robotics applications. Themes common to both initiatives were to reach non-technical students who are not traditional targets for robotics education and to focus their learning on creating interactive sequences for robots based on key HRI design considerations rather than on the underlying mechanical and electrical details related to how those sequences are enacted inside the robot. Both initiatives were successful in terms of producing desired learning outcomes and fostering participant enjoyment.

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Section: Capitalizing On Technology/robotics Interests Among Studentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unconventional Students in Robotics and HRI Education: A Review of Two Initiatives

Zenk¹,

Crowell²,

Villano³

et al. 2017

Journal of Human-Robot Interaction

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In autism, restricted, repetitive behaviors are often grouped into two basic categories: lower and higher order interests [11]. Lower order interests are characterized by repetition of movement, and include motor stereotypies, self-injurious behaviors, object fixations, and repetitive manipulations of objects.…”

Section: Background 21 Autism Spectrum Disordementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most behavioral interventions that use SIs can be divided into two approaches: consequent-based and antecedentbased [11]. Consequent-based approaches leverage the SI as a reward that can be enjoyed after completing a task or after a period of good behavior.…”

Section: Background 21 Autism Spectrum Disordementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Other research suggests that SIs can be used to help build social skills. Several researchers used SIs in play situations to help individuals on the autism spectrum spend more time interacting with their peers [11], [19], [20]. In one case study [20], a child with an extreme fascination of maps was asked to play a game of tag with his peers.…”

Section: Background 21 Autism Spectrum Disordementioning

confidence: 99%

“…These interests were taken from ten publications and reflected actual interests of individuals diagnosed with ASD [11], [12], [19], [20], [23], [24], [33][34][35][36]. Some of the publications referred to lists of interests gathered from survey data, while others included lists of interests from individual case studies.…”

Section: Search-retrieval Study 41 Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Broadening accessibility through special interests

Morris

Kirschbaum

Picard

2010

Proceedings of the 12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

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Individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often fixate on narrow, restricted interests. These interests can be highly motivating, but they can also create attentional myopia, preventing individuals from pursuing a broad range of activities. Interestingly, researchers have found that preferred interests can be used to help individuals with ASD branch out and participate in educational, therapeutic, or social situations they might otherwise shun. When interventions are modified, such that an individual's interest is properly represented, task adherence and performance can increase. While this strategy has seen success in the research literature, it is difficult to implement on a large scale and therefore has not been widely adopted. This paper describes a software approach designed to solve this problem. The approach facilitates customization, allowing users to easily embed images of almost any special interest into computer-based interventions. Specifically, we describe an algorithm that will: (1) retrieve any image from the Google image database; (2) strip it of its background; and (3) embed it seamlessly into Flash-based computer programs. To evaluate our algorithm, we employed it in a naturalistic setting with eleven individuals (nine diagnosed with ASD and two diagnosed with other developmental disorders). We also tested its ability to retrieve and process examples of preferred interests previously reported in the ASD literature. The results indicate that our method was an easy and efficient way for users to customize our software programs. While we believe this model is uniquely suited for individuals with ASD, we also foresee this approach being useful for anyone that might like a quick and simple way to personalize software programs.

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Measuring social attention and motivation in autism spectrum disorder using eye‐tracking: Stimulus type matters

et al. 2015

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Background Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by social impairments that have been related to deficits in social attention, including diminished gaze to faces. Eye-tracking studies are commonly used to examine social attention and social motivation in ASD, but they vary in sensitivity. In this study, we hypothesized that the ecological nature of the social stimuli would affect participants' social attention, with gaze behavior during more naturalistic scenes being most predictive of ASD vs. typical development. Methods 81 children with and without ASD participated in three eye-tracking tasks that differed in the ecological relevance of the social stimuli. In the “Static Visual Exploration” task, static images of objects and people were presented; in the “Dynamic Visual Exploration” task, video clips of individual faces and objects were presented side-by-side; in the “Interactive Visual Exploration” task, video clips of children playing with objects in a naturalistic context were presented. Results Our analyses uncovered a three-way interaction between Task, Social vs. Object Stimuli, and Diagnosis. This interaction was driven by group differences on one task only – the Interactive task. Bayesian analyses confirmed that the other two tasks were insensitive to group membership. In addition, ROC analyses demonstrated that, unlike the other two tasks, the Interactive task had significant classification power. Conclusions The ecological relevance of social stimuli is an important factor to consider for eye-tracking studies aiming to measure social attention and motivation in ASD.

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Effects of Circumscribed Interests on the Social Behaviors of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Cited by 153 publications

References 34 publications

Unconventional Students in Robotics and HRI Education: A Review of Two Initiatives

Unconventional Students in Robotics and HRI Education: A Review of Two Initiatives

Broadening accessibility through special interests

Measuring social attention and motivation in autism spectrum disorder using eye‐tracking: Stimulus type matters

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