Learning Support System for Effectively Conversing with Individuals with Autism Using a Humanoid Robot

Abstract

In this study, a communication learning support system was developed to enable people with typical development (TD), who do not have developmental disorders, to learn the most appropriate way of conversing with those who have autism spectrum disorder (ASD). People with ASD tend to face obstacles in interpersonal relationships because they find it difficult to comprehend conversational implicatures. As a solution, we propose a communication learning support system to enable those with TD to learn how to speak to people with ASD in a way they can understand, including how to best convey conversational implicatures. This learning content simulates the experiences of ASD individuals using dialogues based on real-life examples, in order to teach players why people with ASD cannot understand what they mean and how they can paraphrase their message. This learning content is intended to reproduce the experience of having ASD using a semi-humanoid robot and voice dialogue so that those with TD can easily apply learning content when talking with ASD persons. We changed the robot's reaction based on the extent to which TD individuals understand ASD; we determined their level of understanding using a dialogue corpus and adjusted the learning content accordingly. We explain how the dialogue corpus was compiled, and the process of determining TD individuals' comprehension of ASD.