Emergent emotional and verbal strategies in autism are based on multimodal interactions with toy robots in free spontaneous game play

Abstract

Under the hypothesis that multimodal cognitive processes could be though as a building block from which language could emerge in autistic children, we used a toy robot with and without free game play. A range of cognitive nonverbal criteria including eye contact, touching, manipulation, and posture were analyzed; the frequency of the words and verbs was calculated. Only during game play the children interact quasi-continually and multimodally with the robot and express language. A positive correlation exists between expressive language and multimodal cognitive processes only when free game play with the robot is possible. The data suggest that a mobile toy robot could be used as a neural orthesis in order to improve autistic children's brain multimodal activity and incite them to express language.