ABA-Based Interventions: A Study on Learning Speed in Robotics-Mediated Interventions for Children on the Autism Spectrum

Abstract

Background: The present study aims to investigate the effects of a robotics-mediated intervention on the learning speed within habilitative treatments based on Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) principles for children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
Methods: The study considered as dependent variables the skills in certain verbal operants, such as echoic, Tact, mand, listener, visual-perceptual skills, and imitation, while the independent variable was the use of the NAO robot as a mediator in the intervention. The participants in the study were six children, aged between 3 and 6 years (5 male and one female), divided into an experimental group and a control group. For both groups, we run a pre-test measurement without using robotics. Then, we recorded the number of trials required to reach the acquisition criterion for each item.
Results: The study revealed a functional relationship between using robotics to repeat items (echoic), labeling (Tact), and visual-perceptual tasks.
Conclusions: The research findings demonstrate that the initial hypothesis of using robotics within habilitative interventions led to practical results in some areas of learning (echoic, Tact, and visual-perceptual skills). Further investigation into the potential of this tool in various learning domains could be valuable.