The Clinical Use of Robots for Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Critical Review

By Joshua John Diehl, Lauren M. Schmitt, Michael Anthony Villano, Charles R. Crowell. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 2012

635 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We examined peer-reviewed studies in order to understand the current status of empirically-based evidence on the clinical applications of robots in the diagnosis and treatment of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Studies are organized into four broad categories: (a) the response of individuals with ASD to robots or robot-like behavior in comparison to human behavior, (b) the use of robots to elicit behaviors, (c) the use of robots to model, teach, and/or practice a skill, and (d) the use of robots to provide feedback on performance. A critical review of the literature revealed that most of the findings are exploratory and have methodological limitations that make it difficult to draw firm conclusions about the clinical utility of robots. Finally, we outline the research needed to determine the incremental validity of this technique.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Epidemiology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7e5220f2dbcc02b920612a0085ff3175fb870c08

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Clinical Psychology

1. Catherine Saint-Georges
2. Elizabeth Broadbent
3. Ammar Mahdhaoui
4. Mohamed Chetouani
5. Adriana Tapus
6. Brian Scassellati
7. David Cohen
8. Sylvie Viaux

In Cognitive Neuroscience

1. Adriana Tapus
2. Elizabeth Broadbent
3. Brian Scassellati
4. Cynthia Lynn Breazeal

In Epidemiology

1. Elizabeth Broadbent
2. Brian Scassellati
3. Sebastian Pintea

Citations in the corpus

• Interactions With Robots: The Truths We Reveal About Ourselves (2017, background): “There have been mixed results with large variability between individuals (Diehl et al. 2012).”
• Children with Autism Social Engagement in Interaction with Nao, an Imitative Robot - A Series of Single Case Experiments (2012, background): “As Diehl and colleagues [11] stated, it is unclear whether the findings are the result of cognitive factors related to imitation or an affective preference for the robot over the human.”
• Your Robot Therapist Will See You Now: Ethical Implications of Embodied Artificial Intelligence in Psychiatry, Psychology, and Psychotherapy (2018, neutral): “As with any medical innovation, the effects, impacts, and clinical utility of the applications can only be fully assessed once evidence has improved [50,51].”
• Social Robots as Embedded Reinforcers of Social Behavior in Children with Autism (2012, background): “However, there are few demonstrations over larger samples (for a review see Diehl et al. 2012).”
• Interpersonal Synchrony: A Survey of Evaluation Methods across Disciplines (2012, background): “However, despite media interest, research in this area has been only exploratory, aiming at evaluating preference for machine-like characteristics or using a robot to elicit behaviors, practice a skill, and provide feedback (for a review see [142]).”