Robot-assisted Social Narratives for Children with Diverse Developmental Conditions: A Pilot Study

Social Narratives (SNs) have shown promising benefits for helping children navigate diverse social situations. The use of SNs in Robot-Assisted Play (RAP) can offer creative ways to address social and communication challenges of children with functional needs. In this study, we evaluate the initial use of social stories in robot-assisted therapy to help 17 children with diverse conditions such as Down Syndrome (DS), Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC), and speech disorders (SD) understand and act on real-world situations while interacting with the social robot Furhat. We developed educational stories based on six common professions to show how each professional works and interacts with people. We conducted a user study as part of their daily intervention in a rehabilitation center over two weeks. Overall results demonstrate that there were no significant differences in socio-emotional outcomes among children grouped by their diagnosis, age, and other characteristics. However, their communication skills played a significant role in their performance; in particular, children with verbal abilities had higher completion time in activities compared to their non-verbal counterparts. This result was supported by two therapists who reported higher engagement with the robot among verbal children. We suggest that the SN-inspired intervention could be used to support children with diverse special needs, without causing any negative impacts on their learning.