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Technological agents could be effective tools to be used in interventions for enhancing social orienting for some young children with ASD. We examined response to social bids in preschool children with ASD and typical development (TD) at a very early age (i.e., around 3 years) using social prompts presented by technological agents of various forms and human comparisons. Children with ASD demonstrated less response overall to social bids compared to TD controls, across agents or human. They responded more often to a simple humanoid robot and the simple avatar compared to the human. These results support the potential utilization of specific robotic and technological agents for harnessing and potentially increasing motivation to socially-relevant behaviors in some young children with ASD.

The advantages of using a tele-operated robot to facilitate otherwise difficult verbal disclosure of thoughts and concerns was examined. In a field study, individuals with autism spectrum disorder, who often face obstacles in social interaction, were provided daily-life-guidance by a robot tele-operated by their caregiver. In cases in which the robot was operated remotely or from the same room, subjects were able to disclose concerns to the robot that they had not previously disclosed to their caregiver. Furthermore, under the latter case the improved communicability was maintained through subsequent conversation with the operator. In a separate laboratory experiment involving participants not judged to be on the autism spectrum, it was observed that the participants were silent longer during conversation via a robot than in face-to-face conversation. The enhanced length of silence in the first setting can be considered to be an index for good counseling of a subject. Furthermore, the enhanced length of silence was maintained in subsequent face-to-face conversation with a robot operator in the same room, which appears to be consistent with the results of the field experiment. The findings encourage future applications in therapeutic conversation approaches such as counseling for providing clients with environments that facilitate the disclosure of concerns.