Conversational Agents in Therapeutic Interventions for Neurodevelopmental Disorders: A Survey

TL;DR

This survey reviews the design, goals, and evaluation methods of conversational agents used in therapeutic interventions for neurodevelopmental disorders, identifying gaps and proposing a research agenda.

Contribution

It provides a structured overview of existing systems, highlights design and evaluation gaps, and suggests future research directions for conversational agents in NDD therapy.

Findings

Identified key design features of therapeutic conversational agents

Analyzed evaluation methods used in current systems

Highlighted gaps and proposed a research agenda

Abstract

Neurodevelopmental Disorders (NDD) are a group of conditions with onset in the developmental period characterized by deficits in the cognitive and social areas. Conversational agents have been increasingly explored to support therapeutic interventions for people with NDD. This survey provides a structured view of the crucial design features of these systems, the types of therapeutic goals they address, and the empirical methods adopted for their evaluation. From this analysis, we elaborate a set of recommendations and highlight the gaps left unsolved in the state of the art, upon which we ground a research agenda on conversational agents for NDD.