Investigating Automatic Speech Emotion Recognition for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder in interactive intervention sessions with the social robot Kaspar

In this contribution, we present the analyses of vocalisation data recorded in the first observation round of the European Commission’s Erasmus Plus project “EMBOA, Affective loop in Socially Assistive Robotics as an intervention tool for children with autism”. In total, the project partners recorded data in 112 robot-supported intervention sessions for children with autism spectrum disorder. Audio data were recorded using the internal and lapel microphone of the H4n Pro Recorder. To analyse the data, we first utilise a child voice activity detection (VAD) system in order to extract child vocalisations from the raw audio data. For each child, session, and microphone, we provide the total time child vocalisations were detected. Next, we compare the results of two different implementations for valence- and arousal-based speech emotion recognition, thereby processing (1) the child vocalisations detected by the VAD and (2) the total recorded audio material. We provide average valence and arousal values for each session and condition. Finally, we discuss challenges and limitations of child voice detection and audio-based emotion recognition in robot-supported intervention settings. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. ### Funding Statement This study was funded by the Erasmus Plus project of European Commission: EMBOA, Affective loop in Socially Assistive Robotics as an intervention tool for children with autism, contract no 2019-1-PL01- KA203-065096. ### Author Declarations I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained. Yes The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below: Ethics committee of Gdansk University of Technology (Poland) gave ethical approval for this work. I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals. Yes I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance). Yes I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines and uploaded the relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material as supplementary files, if applicable. Yes Data used for the present study are speech data, i.e. personal data. The participants did not agree to share these data with people outside the EMBOA project team.