Use of Social Assistive Robots - SARs (SARs) to develop symbolic play and imitation skills in students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
Exploring the effects of the use of social robots on the educational process of children with ASD has received the attention of the scientific community. The interest of people with ASDs in devices which lack the "social" characteristics, is due to the stability and consistency of their response, resulting in them being selected as a game and having a positive effect, as was the case with the Furby robot game in the 90's (Kim, 2013). A plethora of robots such as Labo-I, NAO, Probo, Robota, Kaspar and others have been used for research studies (Breazeal, Takanishi, & Kobayashi, 2008). Children with ASDs vary and have deficits in communication, mutual social interaction and imagination, while exhibiting limited, repetitive and stereotypical patterns of behaviour. Play, and more specifically the symbolic play, is a very important phase of evolution, in which children with ASD find it difficult to respond due to their implicit deficiencies, like the deficits of language skills, imagination, first-class performance skills (permanence of objects, cause-and-causality relationship, media-purpose relationship) (Loukrezi, 2013).
