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Robots Teach Autistic Kids Social Skills
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.'"
Am I the only one who finds the idea of robots teaching autistic children to be social slightly ironic?
A-Bomb
For some reason, I don't think it would be any easier hearing "It's okay, it happens to lots of guys" from a robot.
It's still better than having the robot laugh at you.
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?
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).
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
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.
Get a web developer
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]
"Life's short and hard, like a body building elf." -- The Bloodhound Gang
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*
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
I for one warmly welcome our new teaching robots overlords and their socially adept autistic minions.
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.
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.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
That's even worse than having a eunuch teach me about sex.
He's looking for a person just for him, you insensitive clod!
Give Kashyyyk back to the Wookies
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 have never had the theory of relativity. Same for Mozart and his symphonies. And I am not going to even mention extreme cases like Tesla who had a seriously bad case.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
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.
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.
And what's the difference between having social skills and being able to fake having social skills?
This is the argument of many fully-grown autistic adults.
Remember silentmiaow on youtube? She argued that autism isn't necessarily a disability less a different way of interpreting the world.
I have a three year old son that is autistic and one of the most misunderstood things about autism is that all kinds of autism are the same. There are so many types/levels of autism that literally no two cases are alike. For instance, my son is not necessarily anti-social, but he becomes over-stimulated very easily.
...to answer the parent though, not all autistic children have special abilities. That being said, socializing them would not necessarily decrease the abilities of those that have them (a la Rain Man), but it would divert their singular focus from that special ability.
Too many loud sounds or too many people in a social situation will cause him to introvert and exhibit what some people might consider weird behavior. That is the only time he really becomes anti-social. I am not really sure how a robot with a set pattern will cope with the different types of autism. It would only be effective for certain children.
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?
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
In high school, I spend one period per for a semester tuturing autistic students. Most of them feel into one of two categories. They were almost either almost "normal" or barely functioning. it took a careful, thoughtful, hand to teach them. I can't see how a robot (with today's technology) can possibly do even come close to that.
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.
I don't care if the child is autistic or not, I'm not pleased with the thought of robots teaching children. Not only are you robbing them of learning social mores, but you're also telling them that they aren't important enough to be taught be a human. Just one more mechanical babysitter (along with computers and television) in their lives.
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. 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.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
OTOH, it should be noted that, more than likely, most people with autism at this convention were at the higher-functioning end of autism. For them, the autistic tendencies can confer real benefits. Most of those with autism are not necessarily so lucky.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
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...
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 teacher.
Also, many of these children work better with computers than they do with humans. That doesn't mean that humans should be taken out of the picture, but that the computer/robot can do what it's best suited for, and the human instructor can do what he or she is best suited for.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Here goes some pics of the robot from their website: University of Hertfordshire
"How do we say thank you to the nice man, little Timmy?"
"ST- ST- STOP 0X0000000A W- W- WINDOWS H- H- HAS..."
I wonder if this is how the Solarians started....
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.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
You're not retarded. You're just English.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
How dare you call me English! I'm Welsh, thank you very much.
:)
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
I was medically diagnosed with it over 14 years ago and agree that the fad of people who find themselves a little bit more shy/unsusual/inteligent/dislike people & social situations than the average person decide they've got it too doesn't help those who truly have it. Growing up with it and not knowing why you're really different from other kids was not an easy ride, being constantly bullied at the schools I went to because I was different, teachers not doing diddly squat to help and even one of them took me aside and told me it was my fault I was being bullied, is not something anyone should have had to put up with.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
<80's Computer Voice>
"Would you like to play a game?"
</80's Computer Voice>
I hate to say it, but the vast majority of slashdot posters have no clue what they are talking about when it comes to this stuff.
Sad as well since so many important people in science and tech who they hold in high esteem likely experience some form of autism or aspergers. I once read that "Computers were designed by people with aspergers for people with aspergers."
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com