Engagement Is Not Transfer: A Withdrawal Study of a Consumer Social Robot with Autistic Children at Home
This research addresses the challenge of translating robot engagement into real-world social skills for autistic children, revealing a potential trade-off that is incremental but impactful for therapeutic applications.
The study investigated whether engagement with a social robot improves social abilities in autistic children, finding that while continued robot access reduced anxiety, withdrawal led to greater improvements in social motivation, emotion understanding, and empathy.
This study examines whether engagement with social robots translates into improved human-directed social abilities in autistic children. We conducted an 8-week home-based randomized controlled trial with 40 children aged 5--9 using a commercial social robot (Qrobot). Families were assigned to either continued robot access or robot withdrawal. Quantitative measures and caregiver interviews assessed anxiety, social motivation, emotion inference, and empathy. Results showed that continued robot access significantly reduced anxiety, confirming strong affective benefits and high usability. However, children in the withdrawal group demonstrated greater improvements in social motivation, emotion understanding, and empathic behaviors toward caregivers and peers. Qualitative findings revealed a "handoff versus siloing" pattern: withdrawal promoted reorientation toward human social interaction, while continued access concentrated engagement within the child--robot dyad and limited transfer to real-world contexts. We interpret these results as evidence that high engagement does not guarantee social transfer.