Lexi Asplund

The purpose of this case study is to understand the feasibility of examining social interactions with humanoid robots to inform later studies with individuals with communication disorders. Preliminary findings are not suggestive of population trends, but rather for further studies. Individuals may benefit from socially assistive robots, who can create effective interactions with humans to achieve progress in rehabilitation and learning (Feil-Seifer & Matarić, 2009). Therefore, using a humanoid-robot in therapy may be useful to increase interest and positive outcomes (Feil-Seifer & Matarić, 2009). Data on eye gaze tracking and Skin Conductance Response (SCR) was collected. SCR measures the signals produced by the sympathetic nervous system and is positively correlated with emotional arousal (Farnsworth, 2019). While playing the social games with a human, the participant spent 129.8 seconds looking at the therapist (74.3% of trial time), and 44.8 seconds looking away from the therapist (25.7% of trial time). While interacting with the robotic therapist, the participant spent 330.5 seconds looking at the therapist (91.2% of trial time) and 31.8 seconds looking away from the therapist (8.8% of trial time). During the session SCR was increasing 15.95% of the time, decreasing 64.30% of the time and remaining steady 19.75% of the time. Regarding feasibility, it was difficult to record eye gaze data virtually and get the robot to interact with the participant over video conferencing.