title: Minimalistic toy robot to analyze a scenery of speaker-listener condition in autism.
abstract: Atypical neural architecture causes impairment in communication capabilities and reduces the ability of representing the referential statements of other people in children with autism. During a scenery of "speaker-listener" communication, we have analyzed verbal and emotional expressions in neurotypical children (n = 20) and in children with autism (n = 20). The speaker was always a child, and the listener was a human or a minimalistic robot which reacts to speech expression by nodding only. Although both groups performed the task, everything happens as if the robot could allow children with autism to elaborate a multivariate equation encoding and conceptualizing within his/her brain, and externalizing into unconscious emotion (heart rate) and conscious verbal speech (words). Such a behavior would indicate that minimalistic artificial environments such as toy robots could be considered as the root of neuronal organization and reorganization with the potential to improve brain activity.
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Neuroscience, Pierre and Marie Curie University, 75013, Paris, France. igiannopulu@psycho-prat.fr.
authors.forename: Irini
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Giannopulu
authors.affiliation: Centre of Medical Psychiatry, 75017, Paris, France.
authors.forename: Valérie
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Montreynaud
authors.affiliation: Department of Systems Engineering, Prefectural Okayama University, Okayama, 719-1197, Japan.
authors.forename: Tomio
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Watanabe
mesh_terms: D001307:Auditory Perception; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002648:Child; D003142:Communication; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006339:Heart Rate; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012371:Robotics; D013060:Speech; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D013997:Time Factors; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D014825:Vocabulary
keywords: Autism; Embrainment; Emotion; Minimalistic robots; Neurotypical children; Verbal expression