Social Stories for Promoting Social Communication with Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Using a Humanoid Robot: Step-by-Step Study

Technological tools are being used in support sessions with children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), producing a high level of encouragement and engagement in these individuals. A four-step study comprising a focus group session, thinking aloud sessions, an online questionnaire, and a pilot study was conducted. First, a focus group session was conducted with professionals (n = 10) with different backgrounds that support children with ASD on a daily basis. Considering the outputs from the focus group, thinking aloud sessions with two specialists and an online questionnaire with 138 participants were conducted. Finally, a pilot study with four children with ASD was performed in order to test the constraints of the system. The goal of this article is to present findings concerning the design of social stories in a storytelling game that uses a new object with playware technology (OPT) as tangible interface with children with ASD. The storytelling game allows promoting the recognition of emotions in a triadic setup involving a robot, a child, and a professional or researcher. The key issue in this activity is to find the adequacy of the scenarios. The participants pointed out the main aspects to take into account in the development of the storytelling scenarios. New designs of the story scenarios were developed and the final design of the OPT was elaborated. The pilot study allowed to conclude that the children understood the mechanics of the games and successfully interacted with the new OPT.