Exploring emotional and imitational android-based interactions in autistic spectrum disorders

Individuals with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) have impairments in processing of social and emotional information. To widen emotive responsiveness, the employment of robotic systems to engage proactive interactive responses in children with ASDs has been recently suggested. Understanding and teaching the processing of socio-emotional abilities is the inspiring principle of this novel approach and could be of tremendous clinical significance. Encouraging studies with robotic dolls, mobile robots and humanoids acting as social mediators have provided important insights and demonstrate the necessity of long term studies. In this study we report on a series of experiments on four subjects affected by ASDs as they interact with a biomimetic android. We assessed both their spontaneous behavior and reactions to therapist presses in correlation with the time course of the physiological and behavioral data, as well as the focusing of attention towards the android's eye movements and the spontaneous ability to imitate gesture and facial expressions. Overall, subjects demonstrated a decrease in dysfunction in the areas of social communication, implying a marked improvement in these areas after interacting with the android.