Tayler Whitmer and Dr. Bonnie Brinton, Communication Disorders
In recent studies, assistive robotics has been useful in increasing joint attention skills between a child with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and other individuals (Acerson, 2011). These data also show a potential change in tantrum behaviors before and after intervention sessions with the robot. Tantrum behaviors, although normal in young, typical developing children, often persist longer in children with ASD as a result of delayed language development (Osterman & Bjorkqvist, 2010). As tantrum behaviors persist, the time available for these children to learn is diminished as the focus of the child becomes the frustration causing the tantrum rather than the task the child needs to learn. Thus, this study focused on obtaining a quantifiable record of tantrum behaviors that were exhibited before and after robot intervention.
For the purpose of this study, a “tantrum” was defined as any “brief but intense emotional episodes characterized by explosive, impulsive and out of control displays of emotion” (Giesbrecht, Miller, Muller, 2010, p. 479). Tantrum behaviors were then further broken down into five distinct categories including Crying and Screaming; Self- Distracting Behaviors (including bilateral ear plugging); Biting, Pulling Hair, Pinching; Throwing and Shoving; and Hitting and Kicking. Four children, two boys and two girls, with low-functioning ASD participated in the study. The children’s ages ranged from four to nine years. All showed marked delays in social communication, rarely established joint attention, and demonstrated frequent, repetitive or stereotypical behaviors. All of the children demonstrated high levels of tantrum behaviors. These children participated in several sessions of typical intervention, broken up by 10-minute low-dose robot sessions.
Before data were recorded, inter-rater reliability was established for each of the children individually. Overall, 85% reliability was achieved between raters. Six sessions of intervention, before and after the introduction of the robot, for each child, were observed. Tantrum behaviors were noted. Each tantrum behavior that occurred in each 10-second segment was marked. A new tantrum was noted each time the child ceased to exhibit any tantrum behaviors for 30 seconds or for three consecutive 10-second segments. In this manner, both frequency of occurrence of any tantrum behavior was recorded as well as the type of tantrum behavior displayed by the child.
After analyzing the collected data, results showed that there was great variability for each individual child from session to session. Many individual sessions did show a decrease in tantrums from before to after robot intervention. There were some sessions in which no change was indicated, or there was even an increase in tantrum behaviors after the robot intervention had occurred. However, when the data were looked at as a whole across all four participants, the results were more consistent and promising. Three of the four children displayed an overall decrease in frequency of tantrum behaviors after interaction with an assistive robot. The rate of tantrum behavior remained lower after the robot had been removed from the session. These results are presented in the following figure.
Due to these positive results, further research investigating the effect of using a robot on tantrum behaviors during the language intervention is planned. Future research will involve the same four participants and incorporate a larger sample of intervention sessions reviewing before and after robot sessions as well as the robot sessions. Results reporting the analyzed data of this current study were reported in the April 2013 McKay School of Education Mentored Research Poster Conference at Brigham Young University.
Scholarly Sources
- Acerson, Aersta K. (2011). The Effects of the Use of a Humanoid Robot on Social Engagement in Two Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. Thesis. Brigham Young University.
- Giesbrecht, Gerald F., Michael R. Miller,. Ulrich Muller. (2010). The Anger–Distress Model of Temper Tantrums: Associations with Emotional Reactivity and Emotional Competence. University of Vitoria, British Columbia, Canada.
- Österman, Karin., Bjorkvist, Kaj. (2010). A Cross-Sectional Study of Onset, Cessation, Frequency, and Duration of Children’s Temper Tantrums in a Nonclincial Sample. Psychological Reports. 106, 2, 448-454