An emotion recognition comparative study of autistic and typically-developing children using the zeno robot

In this paper we present the results of our recent study on comparing the emotion expression recognition abilities of children diagnosed with high functioning Autism (ASD) with those of typically developing (TD) children through use of a humanoid robot, Zeno. In our study we investigated the effect of incorporating gestures to the emotion expression prediction accuracy of both child groups. Although the idea that ASD individuals suffer from general emotion recognition deficits is widely assumed [1], we found no significant impairment in the general emotion prediction. However, a specific deficit in correctly identifying Fear was found for children with Autism when compared to the TD children. Furthermore, we found that gestures can significantly impact the prediction accuracy of both ASD and TD children in a negative or positive manner depending on the specific expression. Thus, the use of gestures for conveying emotional expressions by a humanoid robot in a social skill therapy setting is relevant. The methodology and experimental protocol are presented and additional discussion of the Zeno R-50 robot used is given.