Looks good, sounds nice: Intonation and bodily appearance in robot-mediated communicative treatment for children with autism
Summary
Children with high-functioning autism (HFA) encounter difficulties with respect to social interaction and communication. Former research has shown that robot-mediated therapy is effective in the behavioral treatment of this disorder. However it has also been shown that not all robots are equally appropriate to be used for this purpose, due to patients’ limited processing capacities and selective attention patterns. The current study investigated whether intonation in a robot’s voice and humanization of its bodily appearance influence the outcomes of pivotal response treatment (PRT) sessions with children with HFA. The children (age range: 4-8) played a puzzle game with a robot, which required communication. Intonation (normal vs. monotonous) was varied on a within-subject basis, whereas appearance manipulation via human clothing was varied between subjects. Performance was assessed by two types of measurements: required prompting of communicative acts and spontaneous communicative initiatives towards the robot. Additionally, affective states received scoring derived from the individual assessment of demonstrated interest, happiness, and appropriate behavior. No effects on performance measurements were found. The influence of intonation on affective states was nonsignificant, although both general and dimension-specific affect scores tended to be higher in monotonous conditions. Appearance had a significant effect on general affect and interest scores, that were higher in ‘human appearance’ conditions. Finally, an interaction effect showed happiness scores to be significantly higher when intonation and appearance were either both machinelike (mechanical appearance, monotonous intonation) or both humanlike (humanlike appearance, normal intonation). Together these findings suggest that intonation and bodily appearance indeed influence affective treatment outcomes, whereas their influence on performance could not be confirmed.