Results

The average completion time of the survey was five minutes. As a qualitative source of information, answers from the professionals are transcribed below. The questions, and the corresponding answers were the following:

Q1: How do you develop emotional recognition? In what ways do you teach feelings: happy, sad, angry, etc.?

- Imitation of behaviours; - Social Stories;

- Images;

- In context and supported by visual information; - Video or alternative communication;

- Symbolic writing;

- Facial mimic;

- The use exaggerated facial expressions.

Q2: What are the main difficulties while developing emotion skills in children with ASD?

- To receive an immediate response from the child; - To attract the child’s attention;

- To explain facial expressions nuances;

- The adequacy of the feelings into proper context; - To put themselves in place of other;

- To associate specific situations to emotions; - To establish eye contact;

- Incapability to express themselves and convey ideas on what they feel; - Communication skills;

- To recognize the emotional states of the child;

- To generalize the emotion recognition in pictures or images to real persons and in context.

Q3: Which kind of materials are used to develop these skills? - Images (with or without captions);

- Words associated to emotions and situations; - Emotions Lotto;

- Stories;

- Sequential image game (Cause-Effect-Emotion); - Puppets; - Mirrors; - Computer Games; - Clay; - Films; - Toys.

Q4: Is the recognition of emotions a goal of the educational program of the children in your school/association? Only one participant answered that emotional recognition was not a goal of the educational program in her school/association. The rest of the participants affirmed that this skill was developed in their educational programs.

Chapter 4. Scenarios for Human-Robot Interaction in Children with ASD 101 Q5: Is this attendance done together with other children or individually? The professionals’ opinions were equally divided between performing these activities in small group or individually (Fig. 4.2).

Figure 4.2: Children’s attendance to sessions. Small groups and individual inter- vention is used mostly by the participants.

Q6: If possible, suggest us two or three activities performed by you with children with ASD, to develop emotional recognition.

- Social Stories;

- Facial expressions imitation; - Observation of pictures; - Facial expressions Lotto; - Peer facial expression reading; - To build faces in clay;

- Cards game - identify and reproduce;

- To say a word or sentence expressing an emotion.

Regarding the results of the two focus groups made with carers and therapists, the conclusions were divided in four categories: vocabulary to use, distribution of the elements in the session room (experimenter, child, and robot), procedures for starting and ending sessions, and material that can help sessions. In each of the four categories the opinion of all the participants was taken into account, and they are summarized in the following paragraphs:

Vocabulary to use:

- Avoid direct questions to the child;

- Use clear instructions and with the same level of vocabulary; - The speech should be paused and rhythmic.

Distribution of the elements in the session room: - Use a familiar room to perform the sessions;

- Find a position of the elements in which the experimenter does not look directly to the child.

Procedures for starting and ending sessions:

- Evaluate if the child tolerates tactile interaction to bring him/her from the classroom; - Avoid direct physical contact, letting the child start those behaviours;

- Ask one of the carers to take the child and stay in the session room, if necessary; - Make an introduction about the robot, so the child consider it a safe object to play; - Use the robot to meet the interest of the child;

- Use PECS if the child normally uses them in their daily routine;

- Let the child explore the new object, giving him/her time to observe the robot’s specificities.

Material that can help sessions:

- The images the child is going to use to match facial expressions on the robot should be resistant;

- All extra material should be colourful to attract their attention.

4.2.3

Discussion of the Results

Having in mind the responses given by these professionals, it was necessary to select the best approaches to be adapted to new game scenarios. These game scenarios would have to include the robot as the central element. Three different game scenarios were chosen:

- Recognize: The child should match the facial expression performed by the robot with a selection of images with facial expressions.

- Imitation: The robot performs a facial expression and the child should imitate it. - Storytelling: The robot tells a simple story about a situation that happened to it, and the child should match the robot’s “feelings” in the end of the story.

All the indications given by the participants in the focus groups were included in the procedure of the exploratory studies presented in the following sections.

Chapter 4. Scenarios for Human-Robot Interaction in Children with ASD 103

4.2.4

Summary and Conclusions

The insight and feedback of professionals who interact with children with ASD play a key role in the research design. With this knowledge and with the perspectives based on the literature, game scenarios which aim to develop emotion recognition skills in children with ASD started to be prepared. The definition of these game scenarios was the first step to start modelling the interaction between the experimenter, the robot, and the child, also called a triadic interaction. The following sections are going to take into account this information to establish a flow of events in each game scenario, to increase the children’s attention span and interactive behaviours such as verbal and non-verbal communication, or tactile interaction.