Comparing the Effectiveness of Sensory Integration Therapy With and Without an Assistive Robot on Social Interaction of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder. Weakness in social interactions and sensory disorders are the problems of children with ASD. These children are weak in social interactions with other children and their therapists. Robots may be used as a friend or assistive therapist to teach different social and cognitive skills to them. This study aims to compare the effectiveness of sensory integration therapy with and without an assistive robot on social interaction of children with ASD.

This is a quasi-experimental study with a pretest/posttest/follow-up design using a control group. The study population consists of all children with ASD aged 7-9 years in Tehran, Iran. Of these, 45 children with a moderate level of ASD were selected and randomly divided into two experimental groups and one control group. Data collection tool was the social interaction subscale of the second edition of the Gilliam Autism Rating Scale. Both experimental groups received sensory integration therapy at 15 sessions, while only one group received the therapy with an assistive robot at 15 sessions. The data were collected before, immediately after, and two months after the intervention. The collected data were analyzed using a mixed analysis of variance in SPSS v. 22 software. The significance level was set at 0.05.

The results showed that the sensory integration therapy with and without the use of an assistive robot were significantly effective in improving the social interactions of children with ASD, where the sensory integration therapy with an assistive robot had a greater effect (P<0.05). 

The sensory integration therapy with an assistive robot is more effective in improving the social interactions of children with ASD compared to the sensory integration therapy without the use of an assistive robot.