How Neurotypical and Autistic Children Interact Nonverbally with Anthropomorphic Agents in Open-Ended Tasks

TL;DR

This study explores how neurotypical and autistic children nonverbally interact with virtual agents in open-ended settings, revealing behaviors crucial for designing inclusive social robots.

Contribution

It provides novel insights into children's nonverbal behaviors with embodied agents during unconstrained interactions, including repetitive movements, informing future robot design.

Findings

Children exhibit diverse nonverbal behaviors with virtual agents.

Repetitive face and hand movements are common among children.

Interaction patterns differ from those observed in adults.

Abstract

What nonverbal behaviors should a robot respond to? Understanding how children-both neurotypical and autistic-engage with embodied artificial agents is critical for developing inclusive and socially interactive systems. In this paper, we study "open-ended" unconstrained interactions with embodied agents, where little is known about how children behave nonverbally when given few instructions. We conducted a Wizard-of-Oz study in which children were invited to interact nonverbally with 6 different embodied virtual characters displayed on a television screen. We collected 563 (141 unique) nonverbal behaviors produced by children and compare the childre's interaction patterns with those previously reported in an adult study. We also report the presence of repetitive face and hand movements, which should be considered in the development of nonverbally interactive artificial agents.