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Robots Teach Autistic Kids Social Skills

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Mon Jul 09, 2007 02:22 PM
from the bender-not-a-great-model dept.
Robotics Science
posys writes "Wired Magazine has an article showing how the eternal patience of robots lends itself well to teaching new social skills to autistic children. 'The researchers hope that the end result is a human-like robot that can act as a "social mediator" for autistic children, a steppingstone to improved social interaction with other children and adults. "KASPAR provides autistic children with reliability and predictability. Since there are no surprises, they feel safe and secure," Robins said, adding that the purpose is not to replace human interaction and contact but to enhance it. Robins has already tested some imitation and turn-taking games with the children and his preliminary findings are positive.'"
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  • Ummm (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bombula (670389) on Monday July 09 2007, @02:24PM (#19804457)
    Am I the only one who finds the idea of robots teaching autistic children to be social slightly ironic?
    • It just means we'll have a bunch of slightly-more-social-than-usual autistic kids who speak with a robotic voice.
    • > Am I the only one who finds the idea of robots teaching autistic children to be social slightly ironic?

      Definitely. Definitely slightly ironic.

    • Re:Ummm (Score:5, Insightful)

      by the dark hero (971268) <adriatic_hero @ h otmail.com> on Monday July 09 2007, @02:45PM (#19804813) Homepage
      Ironic: Yes. Useful: Extreme Potential

      Have you ever had to care for an autistic child? I was asked to watch over one for maybe half an hour to forty-five minutes. I wasn't prepared for what was to happen next, but i learned a lot. In fact, the kid taught me more than i could even try to teach him. The boy was about 9 years old, but had the mental capacity of a 5 year old. Sadly, that's probably never going to change. One thing to remember is that some autistic children don't speak. They do things largely based on habit. Kinda sounds less ironic if you have something to relate to in order to assist social interaction with other humans.

      • I've known several autistic children, and you might be surprised at what some of them know. Now, granted, there are often other developmental disorders that accompany autism, but what you interpret as reduced mental capacity might be reduced motivation. I knew one kid that had almost no verbal skills and was thought to be very unaware of his surroundings, but when the right motivators were found it was revealed that he knew the names of everyone around him and much more. (Of course, he's still most likely developmentally delayed.)

        That said, I agree that the robot could be extremely helpful. For many children with autism it might turn out to be the right motivator.

        • There was a very interesting piece on NPR a few months back about a convention for autistics. It may seem strange that they would hold such a convention, but it provided a forum for many incredible people to meet where someone wanting to wander off into a corner to be alone would be understood by others in attendance.

          One speaker made a very compelling argument that this "disorder" should in many instances be considered just a different mode of operation rather than a disease. One benefit of the way his brain works is that he can concentrate at a high level on the same stream of thought for hours...something that is very rare in "normally" wired people. One persons compulsive disorder is anothers passion, persistence and dedication.

          Sure of someone unable to engage the world around them is going to be an absolute nightmare to raise and this research may be a means of greatly enriching these people's lives. A "cure for autism" might not be welcomed by all those afflicted however?

          • I believe current theory is that most people with autism have interconnection problems, actually. I.e., the various regions of the brain are not communicating well with each other. However, the label "autism" is often about as specific as the label "cancer". That is, I'm quite certain there are several different development disorders that have been lumped under the same label. If you go to a school for children with autism (my wife works in one), you'll notice that these children are more different from each other than the "typical" child with autism is different from a "typical" child without autism. The only things they all have in common are the conditions that were necessary for them to be labelled as having autism in the first place. Some of them have severe mental deficiencies. Others are capable of earning a Ph.D. [templegrandin.com] Most of them, however, at least appear to have lower mental functioning than the typically developing child. (By "appear", I mean by an impartial observer using the tools they have available to them. Unfortunately, the impartial observer cannot always understand the way to communicate to a particular child with autism or the way to interpret such a child's actions. OTOH, a "partial" observer is subject to the typical problems associated with being partial - including a desire to believe that a child has more potential than he or she might actually have.)

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Nemetroid (883968)
              Yes. I know two persons with autism. One of them is in my IB class, studying Physics and Mathematics at Higher Level. The other one, while not a straight A student, is good at communicating socially. So, to label autistic children as mentally deficient is not right since it covers a huge spectra.

          • I guess you could get a person to monitor the robotic tutoring, but you'd end up with a human watching a robot teach a human. Which would be a waste.

            Or, you could have a human watching ten robots teach ten humans. Each of those humans get semi-individualized instruction with the benefit of a human instructor if one is needed. In my wife's school, most of the children with autism get a teacher all to themselves for most of the day. The exceptions to this are the more advanced children who work two to a tea

    • Am I the only one who finds the idea of robots teaching autistic children to be social slightly ironic?

      Oxymoronic maybe, because as far as I know social implies like organisms.

    • No, I thought the exact same thing when I read the headline. Using emotionless, socially unconscious machines to "teach" autistic kids is absolutely bizarre--if not downright cruel. It's like a WoW player asking his guildmates for advice on picking up a girl.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mooingyak (720677)
      As the parent of a mildly autistic child, this sounds brilliant.

      It's all about PATIENCE. There are some behaviors that took enormous effort to drill into her. It required us providing consistent gentle reminders that some particular behavior was inappropriate. It does no good to get angry, it does no good to scream, these don't particularly register. It's very easy to get frustrated by the excessive repetitiveness.
  • How about an infinitely patient, loving, sex-bot to help everyone over the anxiety of their first few hundred experiences? After all, sex sells, meaning that you can finance the cost of robots for a lot of other functions, if it includes sex as well.
  • I learned all my social skills from the internet and look at me now. Who says autistic children can't do the same with robots?

  • Not just for Autistic Kids.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2007, @02:36PM (#19804645)


    It worked for Al Gore too!

    (P.S. - I personally like and would vote for Gore, but everyone is always saying that he's as stiff as a robot).
  • Slashdoter: "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!"

    Robot: "Women are not impressed by your vast array of Monty Python Quotes."

    Slashdoter: "I'll bite your kneecaps off!"

    Robot: "Women are not impressed by your vast array of Monty Python Quotes."

    Slashdotter: "It's merely resting, pining for the fjords."

    Robot: "Women are not impressed by your vast array of Monty Python Quotes."

    Next week: Watch the Robot attempt to disuade the Slashdotter from using an "In Soviet Russia" joke.

    Slashdoter: "In Soviet Russia, robot programs you!"

    Robot: "I'm just not getting through to you, am I?"

    Crow T. Trollbot

  • I don't mind it as a supplementation as long as it works, but there is going to be some idiot who thinks that this may be a replacement for parents...for which there can NEVER be a real replacement.

    • I don't mind it as a supplementation as long as it works, but there is going to be some idiot who thinks that this may be a replacement for parents...for which there can NEVER be a real replacement.

      This isn't some kind of "nanny bot" that is meant to be a care giver for autistic children. This is a simplified human-analog that helps autistic children associate specific facial gestures with specific emotional states, which is something that most autistics don't have an natural understanding of.

      By providing a small sub-set of facial gestures that are always used the same way for the same reasons, these children can build that association into their subconscious understanding for future interactions wi

      • Actually, I can see this robot as the for-runner for a nanny bot. If it works great with autistic kids, why not enhance it a little to work with normal children? I can see the robot having some kind of camera on it that feeds directly to a parent's PDA. Then, the robot could babysit the kids with the parents looking in. It's a scary thought.

    • I don't mind it as a supplementation as long as it works, but there is going to be some idiot who thinks that this may be a replacement for parents...for which there can NEVER be a real replacement.

      I don't really get where you're going with that. Who is the idiot going to be? A scientist who tries to kills some autistic kid's family so it can be raised by robots? An autistic kid's parent thinking they can dump their kid with a robot and never deal with it again? A politician deciding that robots are the parents of the future, declaring families illegal and taking all children into state-owned robot-run child farms to indoctrinate the boys as loyal soldiers and the girls as doting housewives?

      Sorry, I

  • welcome (Score:3, Funny)

    by ArCh3r (688116) on Monday July 09 2007, @02:43PM (#19804773)
    I for one warmly welcome our new teaching robots overlords and their socially adept autistic minions.

  • Huh? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Das Auge (597142) on Monday July 09 2007, @02:52PM (#19804921)
    That's even worse than having a eunuch teach me about sex.
  • While I'm somewhat aware of the social problems faced by autistic children and their families, but don't said children also have their own special abilities that tend to be lost the more they are socialized?

  • Words of caution (Score:5, Insightful)

    by scaz (182686) on Monday July 09 2007, @03:12PM (#19805185) Homepage
    While the use of robots with children with autism has generated intense interest from a variety of research groups (mine included), one thing that the media often leaves out when reporting these stories is that these studies are still experimental. There have been no published studies to date that show long-term behavioral change following interaction trials with robots, only one case study that has looked at long-term effects of these interactions, and no studies that have shown any transfer of skills from human-robot interaction to human-human interaction.

    Every time an article like this is published, my office and my colleagues are barraged with requests from individuals, families, and educators looking for the robot that will "cure" autism. While everyone working in this area has great hopes for what is possible, we don't yet have any clinical or experimental data to support any claims of effectiveness.

  • Counterproductive? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rehtonAesoohC (954490) on Monday July 09 2007, @03:21PM (#19805285) Journal
    While I understand that while robots are infinitely patient and can help an autistic child learn on that basis, wouldn't that be counterproductive?

    What I mean by that is that while robots are infinitely patient, society is not. An average person in social situations is not patient indefinitely, so why would we teach them that social situations mean perfect patience? I'm not trying to be mean-spirited or cruel sounding; I am genuinely curious as to whether or not these autistic children would grow up understanding that everyone everywhere can tolerate their quirks with infinite patience.

    Then again, it might be a catch-22 in itself... Autistic child can't learn unless the teacher exudes perfect patience, human teacher can't accomplish that, child can't learn, etc.

    But then again, maybe it's not so cut-and-dried as that and people could maybe work on being more patient? That would seem ideal to me.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by nelsonal (549144)
      It took a much more patient teacher to teach us that the derivative of x2 was x/2 and the integral of x was 1/2x^2+C than the lesson that the integral of sin(x) was cos(x) even though the latter is generally a more advanced concept.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Chris Burke (6130)
      Um, maybe because it's easier to learn basic social skills from an infinitely patient unflappable robot, then apply and refine those skills with finite-patience irritable humans, than it would be to try to learn social skills from the irritable human in the first place?

      It's the same concept as learning to throw and catch with your dad just by tossing the ball back and forth just for fun, then practicing with a team, then playing in a little league game, rather than trying to learn to throw and catch by play

  • The Naked Sun (Score:4, Insightful)

    by kalirion (728907) on Monday July 09 2007, @04:25PM (#19806075)
    I wonder if this is how the Solarians started....
    • So rather than try to assist them in being as functional as possible, possibly even to the point that they can hold some sort of real job, you would rather that they remain completely disfunctional, sitting at home and draining taxpayers resources until they die?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by provigilman (1044114)
        Yeah and, you know, why waste time helping ALS sufferers? I mean, they can't really move around unassisted or even speak for that matter. Maybe we should just abandon them too? Of course that would mean no Stephen Hawkins, but hey, he's defective too...right? [/sarcasm]
      • Sitting at home? Well, perhaps we better build some summer camps where the little autistic tykes learn some life skills such as paying attention, social interaction, and concentration, eh?

        *ducks*
        • Considering that most 'actual' physical slights from autism stem from exceptional sensory input of some type (and probably the lack of neural pruning this causes), how would you test for this in a way that didn't penalize normal people somehow?

          Seems ironic that society would penalize people who sense 'too much' the same way they do those that don't sense 'enough'...
    • I'd use a mod point, but I want you to personally take the hit instead of some AC. I guess that you have never worked or been around autistic people....or you're deliberately trolling for an idiotic joke, for which you need to be kicked in unmentionable places and suffer multiple cheap shots.

    • Re:Waste of effort (Score:5, Interesting)

      by datapharmer (1099455) on Monday July 09 2007, @02:38PM (#19804685) Homepage
      That is incredibly ignorant. I have known several autistic people and have befriended a couple and I have seen MAJOR improvements after just being patient and excusing their inappropriate reactions and eccentricities. Just recognizing when they say something funny or make an appropriate social reaction to an event and brushing off the rest without being critical led one kid I know to grow up and live a very normal life. He comes off as a little eccentric to people when they first meet him, but his autism makes him a bit obsessive which actually makes him a great worker in fields which require insane levels of concentration and attention to detail (like engineering) because he really gets into whatever he likes.

      Autism does not mean stupid and does not mean broken. Autism comes in many different levels of severity and type and people with autism can be a huge asset to society, thus the time spent educating them in social graces is money well spent.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by arivanov (12034)
        Seconded.

        Though you are actually not looking at the GP argument in sufficient depth. It is a popular tendency today to brand even the smallest deviation from the average as autism and try to "cure" it or "compensate" for it. Plenty of lousy, lame and lazy teachers use this as an excuse to avoid children that require individual attention and do not study well in a group.

        Many great brains and problem solvers are wiped in the process. Einstein would have been put on Ritalin by the age of 6 nowdays and we would

    • I don't understand why anyone would spend their time working on robots to help what are effectively defects. Autistic people, like retards, can't be fixed. Their affliction is permanent. It's not like physical therapy with a cripple, at least they can benefit. I would be more interested in cripple-helping robots than retard babysitting robots.

      1.) Autism is treatable with therapy and many autistic children gain a level of functionality where you probably couldn't tell they have autism.

      2.) You're a jackass, go die and free up some carbon for useful purposes.

    • Re:Waste of effort (Score:4, Informative)

      by hack slash (1064002) on Monday July 09 2007, @04:27PM (#19806097)
      As someone who has AS I'd just like to say; fuck you with a cherry on top you ingnorant small-minded arsehole. Actually that's wrong, an arsehole actually has a useful function.

      Since getting internet access back in '95 I've somewhat 'come out of my shell', posting to usenet and spending hours on IRC (past dialup phonebills of £300-£500 a quarter will testament to that!) has enabled me to communicate with other people without having to do it face to face, without having to respond in the moment the other party stopped speaking, 30-60s delay on replying on IRC was fine because there was no awkward silence and wondering where to look as with face-to-face conversations, and no real time limit on usenet replies meant they could be well thought out before pressing the Post button.

      The years of communication through text has helped me with being in social situations (but I still dislike them) and face-to-face communication like looking in the other persons eye, not always feeling out of place and sometimes being able to talk about other things than computers & electronics ;)

      Another thing the internet has given me is a much thicker skin, you can swear blue murder at me, call me names etc. and I let it wash over me, before I'd take it deeply personally and it'd screw me up for the rest of the day and probably the next one or two.

      I'll leave this post with this nice quote, don't know it originated from but seems quite apt:

      Words are strange creatures. When spoken, they have emphasis and inflection. Written words, however, are inert, completely subject to interpretation, and as a result are quite often misconstrued.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Spy der Mann (805235)
      Who would have thought that the blind leading the blind could actually work?

      Technically, it's an incorrect analogy. It would be more like a guide dog leading the blind. The dog (in this case the robot) is trained to produce specific responses to specific situations, helping the user (the autistic child) to deal with those situations. Now the advantage is that autistic kids CAN learn... so they won't be dependent on the robots forever... I hope.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Kohath (38547)
      And what's the difference between having social skills and being able to fake having social skills?

      • Re:Autism (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Jhon (241832) * on Monday July 09 2007, @03:49PM (#19805623) Homepage Journal

        And what's the difference between having social skills and being able to fake having social skills?
        Alert: Speaking as someone with Aspergers!

        From an outside observer, not much. From the INSIDE, it's an un-natural mechanism we learn to allow us to relate to others. It's a weird 'dance' that is never natural -- and if you hang around us enough, you'll notice repeats in virtually the exact same way. If we don't do the 'dance', we can't get to the 'stuff' we want.

        Example:

        Person: "Hi Jhon! How are you?"
        Me: "Been better... been worse, can't complain"
        Person: "Why do you always answer that?"
        Me: "Because you always ask the same question.".

        Actually, I'm not as bad as others on the spectrum (socially, that is). I'm lucky. I CAN emote quite well in writing, and pick up all kinds of queues in writing that I don't from faces of vocal inflections. If you see me pause after you say something to me it's probably me 'transcribing' the 'spoken word' to a 'pad' in my head which I then read-back to myself.

        I got my wife to fall for me through daily letters. Happily married 10 years + 2 kids (+ another on the way), thank you! But god bless her, I'm not an easy person to live with!

        Granted, we're talking about a SPECTRUM disorder -- most of my problems are related to perception of 'natural queues'. Others on the spectrum can have a variety of problems in addition...

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