Robotic movement elicits visuomotor priming in children with autism
Robotic movement elicits visuomotor priming in children with autism
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DOI：
10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.08.020
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发表时间：
2008-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
2.6
通讯作者：
Castiello, Umberto
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Pierno, Andrea C.;Mari, Morena;Castiello, Umberto
理解另一个人的行为，并在必要时模仿该行为的能力，是人类社会行为的核心组成部分。在寻找自闭症社会困难的根本原因时，模仿技能引起了特别的关注。近年来，有报道称自闭症患者可以通过与机器人互动来绕过他们的一些社交缺陷。然而，机器人在模仿方面的偏好还有待证明。在这里，我们提供的经验证据表明，与机器人的互动可以引发自闭症儿童的模仿行为。我们在视觉启动实验中比较了一组高功能自闭症儿童和一组典型发育儿童。参与者被要求观察一个人或一个机器人手臂模型对一个球形物体执行一个伸手去抓的动作。随后，要求观察员对同一物体执行相同的动作。两个“控制”的条件下，参与者进行的运动，无论是静态的人或机器人模型的存在也包括在内。对观察者的伸手抓握动作进行了运动学分析。我们的研究结果表明，自闭症儿童的促进-揭示了一个更快的运动持续时间和预期的峰值速度-当启动由机器人，而不是由人类手臂运动。正常儿童的情况正好相反。目前的研究结果表明，与机器人的互动对视觉启动过程有影响。这些发现表明，在自闭症儿童中，对观察到的行为进行编码的神经机制可能是针对处理社会上更简单的刺激而设计的。(C)2007爱思唯尔有限公司保留所有权利。
The ability to understand another person's action and, if needed, to imitate that action, is a core component of human social behaviour. Imitation skills have attracted particular attention in the search for the underlying causes of the social difficulties that characterize autism. In recent years, it has been reported that people with autism can bypass some of their social deficits by interacting with robots. However, the robot preference in terms of imitation has yet to be proved. Here we provide empirical evidence that interaction with robots can trigger imitative behaviour in children with autism. We compared a group of high functioning children with autism with a group of typically developing children in a visuomotor priming experiment. Participants were requested to observe either a human or a robotic arm model performing a reach-to-grasp action towards a spherical object. Subsequently, the observers were asked to perform the same action towards the same object. Two 'control' conditions in which participants performed the movement in the presence of either the static human or robot model were also included. Kinematic analysis was conducted on the reach-to-grasp action performed by the observer. Our results show that children with autism were facilitated - as revealed by a faster movement duration and an anticipated peak velocity - when primed by a robotic but not by a human arm movement. The opposite pattern was found for normal children. The present results show that interaction with robots has an effect on visuomotor priming processes. These findings suggest that in children with autism the neural mechanism underlying the coding of observed actions might be tailored to process socially simpler stimuli. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.