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 Using the social robot Probo as a social story
telling agent for children with ASD

Bram Vanderborght1,2, Ramona Simut1,2, Jelle Saldien1,3,

Cristina Pop2, Alina S. Rusu2, Sebastian Pintea2, Dirk Lefeber1 &
Daniel O. David2,4
1Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Robotics & Multibody Mechanics Research Group,

Brussels, Belgium / 2Babes-Bolyai University, Department of Clinical Psychology

and Psychotherapy, Cluj-Napoca, Romania / 3Howest University College, Industrial
Design Center, Kortrijk, Belgium / 4Mount Sinai School of Medicine, USA

This paper aims to study the role of the social robot Probo in providing assistance
to a therapist for robot assisted therapy (RAT) with autistic children. Children
with autism have difficulties with social interaction and several studies indicate
that they show preference toward interaction with objects, such as computers and
robots, rather than with humans. In 1991, Carol Gray developed Social Stories, an
intervention tool aimed to increase children’s social skills. Social stories are short
scenarios written or tailored for autistic individuals to help them understand
and behave appropriately in social situations. This study shows that, in specific
situations, the social performance of autistic children improves when using the
robot Probo, as a medium for social story telling, than when a human reader tells
the stories. The robot tells Social Stories to teach ASD children how to react in
situations like saying “hello”, saying “thank you” and “sharing toys”. The robot has
the capability of expressing emotions and attention via its facial expressions and
its gaze. The paper discusses the use of Probo as an added-value therapeutic tool
for social story telling and presents the first experimental results.

Keywords:  social robot; ASD children; social story; robot assisted therapy

1.  Introduction

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are psychological conditions characterized

by widespread abnormalities in social interactions and communication, as well
as severely restricted interests and highly repetitive behavior (Tager 2001).
­Several reviews estimate ASD prevalence of 1 per 110 (Baird 2006). These social
and communication deficits make it difficult for ASD individuals to engage in
social interaction which can lead to a lack of learning opportunities in their

Interaction Studies 13:3 (2012), –. doi 10.1075/is.13.3.02van

issn 1572–0373 / e-issn 1572–0381 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
 Using the social robot Probo as a social story telling agent for children with ASD 

classrooms and daily lives (Travis 1998). The majority of these individuals
cannot live independently after reaching adulthood. Therefore, a demand for
early interventions exists. Thus, as a consequence of the efforts to increase their
motivation in therapeutical sessions, the use of puppets, dolls or fur animals
became a recurrent theme in therapeutical interventions focusing on ASD
children. Animal Assisted Therapy (AAT, (Nimer 2007)) has been also used
in several cases, but the problem with animals is that they are difficult to con-
trol, they have a certain degree of behavorial unpredictability, and they can
carry diseases and induce allergies. Therefore, the use of robots (instead of ani-
mals) might have more advantages in therapeutic contexts. Due to the recent
advances in personal robots, the technology allows the use of Robot Assisted
Therapy (RAT). There are different interventions that focus on the improve-
ment of social skills for ASD individuals, one is the Social Stories developed
by Carol Gray (2000). Social Stories are short scenarios written or tailored to
autistic individuals to help them understand and behave appropriately in social
situations. Research showed empirical evidence on the effectiveness of Social
Story interventions (Sansosti 2004; Adams 2004; Barry 2004). Many children
with ASD show an affinity for computers (Hart 2005), which is the reason why
virtual peers (AVPs) have been used for the Social Story Intervention (Tartaro
2006). Social Story Intervention is based on the premise that a better under-
standing of a specific social situation will improve the social functioning of
ASD individuals (Kokina 2010; GR 2012).
Over the last decade, several authors have evaluated the effectiveness of Social
Stories at the level of decreasing problematic behaviors, such as aggression, scream-
ing, grabbing toys and crying (Kuoch 2003; Crozier 2007). Also, the effectiveness
of the Social Story interventions has been evaluated at the level of increasing desir-
able behaviors, such as greeting and sharing things (Swaggart 1995), choice and
play behavior (Barry 2004) and appropriate social interaction (Scattone 2006). In
many of these studies, Social Stories have been used either as a single intervention
(Scattone 2006), or combined with other interventions, such as verbal and picto-
rial prompts, reinforcement for appropriate responses, behavior charts, and vari-
ous priming strategies (Crozier 2007).
Social stories are usually read by human therapists, and ASD children are
supposed to pay attention to the therapist while he/she is presenting the story.
Since it is generally known that ASD individuals have difficulties in maintaining
attention while interacting with other persons, we explore here the possibility of
presenting the social story by a non-human agent (with a male human voice),
i.e. a social robot. Emerging research shows that children with ASD proactively
approach robots (Dautenhahn 2002). Recent data indicate that robots can act as

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 Bram Vanderborght et al.

a mediator between the child and the therapist (Dautenhahn 2002), that robots
can be used for play therapy (Francois 2009) and that they can elicit joint attention
episodes between a child and an adult (Robins 2004). Different forms of robots
have been used for autism therapies from more hobby-toy style robots like GIPY-1
(Dautenhahn 2002), SuperG, Cari, Robus-T, DiskCat (Michaud 2000), cartoon-like
robots like Keepon (kozima 2005), mobile wheeled robots like Labo-1 (Dauten-
hahn 2004), Pekee (Dautenhahn 2003), the IROMEC robot system (Ferrari 2009);
robotic animals like Aibo (Stanton 2008), robotic dolls like Robota (Billard 2003),
and humanoid robots like Kaspar (Robins 2010) and HOAP-3 (Ravindra 2009).
This paper presents the innovative use of the social robot Probo (Fig. 1) as a story
telling agent with ASD children. The robot Probo was developed to serve as a mul-
tidisciplinary research platform for human-robot interaction and to develop RATs
focused on children.

Figure 1.  Outer and inner appearance of the huggable robot Probo

Our study is an exploratory investigation of the innovative combination

between two methods that are both designed to increase the level of social perfor-
mance of children with ASD. The study was carried out on four cases of preschool
ASD children (by using the method of single-case experiment) and investigated
whether the presence of a social robot (i.e. Probo) would improve the effectiveness

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 Using the social robot Probo as a social story telling agent for children with ASD 

of the Social Stories method in terms of increasing the social performance of the
participants. An improvement in the level of social performance and in the inde-
pendence of the child is expected to be associated with a decrease in the level
of prompting that the therapist has to offer to each child in order to perform
the targeted social behaviors. It is important to specify that we do not intend to
generalize the results of this investigation to the general population of autistic
children. By using single-case experiments and by performing personalized data
analysis, this study aims to investigate specific cases as to whether the social robot
Probo can improve the therapeutic value of the Social Story method for autistic
children.
Based on the results of previous studies supporting the efficacy of Social
Stories in learning appropriate social responses (Sansosti 2004) and those of
studies showing beneficial effects of RAT to improve social abilities of children
with ASD, our research hypotheses are the following: (1) Compared to the base-
line, Social Stories interventions will be associated with a decrease in the level of
prompting the therapist has to give to each child in order to perform appropri-
ate social responses in specific social situations; (2) Compared to the Social Story
intervention (where the story is presented by the human therapist), the combina-
tion of Social Stories and RAT intervention (where the story is presented by the
social robot), will be associated with a lower level of prompting that the therapist
has to give to each child in order to perform the appropriate social responses in
specific social situations.

2.  Method

2.1  Participants
Two boys and two girls participated in this study. The chronological age of the
four children was between 4 to 9 years old. The children were diagnosed accord-
ing to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Disorders IV criteria of autism
(American 2000). All parents were formally informed and agreed to the par-
ticipation of their children in this study. The study took place at the Autism
Transylvania Association, a therapy centre for children with ASD, from Cluj-
Napoca, Romania. The setting for the experiments was a therapy room (about
20 m2, see Fig. 2), in which the children usually participated in all the therapeu-
tic programs, so the children were familiar with the room. The therapist who
performed the interaction had been part of the permanent staff of the autism
center for the past 3 years and also gave regular therapy sessions to the involved
children.

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 Bram Vanderborght et al.

Figure 2.  Safe and huggable design of Probo allows for both cognitive and physical
interaction

The inclusion criteria for the children were: (a) previous diagnosis of autism
spectrum disorder performed by a clinical psychologist using the Autism Diag-
nostic Observation Schedule (Generic ADOS-G) (Lord 2000), and the Autism
Diagnostic Interview (ADI-R) (Lord 1994); (b) lack of initiation or appropriate
social response in a given social situation; (c) presence of some reading prerequi-
sites (ability to open and browse a book, previous experience with story books);
(d) ability of recognizing emotions; (e) frequent visits to the therapy center.
Characteristics of the participants:
Participant no. 1: Georgia is an 8 year-old girl, diagnosed with moderate
autism. She was included in an 8 hours/day therapy program consisting of behav-
ioral therapy, physiotherapy, speech and music therapy. Prior to the study, Georgia
showed difficulties in social communication and behaving apppropriately in social
circumstances, e.g. she never said “Thank you” if she received something or some-
body helped her in certain situations. The appropriate social skill to be improved
for Georgia was the ability to say “Thank You”.
Participant no. 2: Antonia is an 8 year-old girl, the twin-sister of Georgia,
and was diagnosed with moderate autism. She was included in an 8 hours/day
therapy program consisting of behavioral therapy, physiotherapy, speech and
music therapy. She presented a better level of cognitive development than her
sister, but the major difficulties that Antonia has, are at the level of social interac-
tions and behavioral management. Prior to the study, every time she needed to
do something (learning or play activity) together with somebody else, she refused
to interact with a potential social partner and she manifested several disruptive
behaviors, such as screaming, pinching and using verbal stereotypes. In Anto-
nia’s case, we decided to target the ability to share toys when she is playing with
another child and to reduce the frequency of disruptive behavior in these specific
situations.

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 Using the social robot Probo as a social story telling agent for children with ASD 

Participant no. 3: Mihnea is a 4 year-old boy, diagnosed with moderate autism.

He is included in a 6 hours/day therapy consisting of behavioral ­therapy, speech
therapy, language therapy and physiotherapy. Prior to the study, he almost never
said “Hello” when meeting a person or entering a room. Even though Mihnea had a
high level of cognitive development, he had many stereotype b ­ ehaviors i­ nterfering
with his development of social interaction. The target social ability was to initiate
interaction by saying “Hello” spontaneously whenever he entered a room and met
a person (see Fig. 3).

Figure 3.  The robot is used in a Wizard of Oz method, with the operator sitting
in another room

Participant no. 4: Nicu is a 7 year-old boy, diagnosed with moderate autism.

He was included in 8 hours/day therapeutical program consisting of behavioral
therapy, physiotherapy, speech and sensory-integration therapy. In social situa-
tions, especially in unfamiliar settings and in the presence of unfamiliar persons,
Nicu was observed exhibiting several self-stimulating behaviors such as hands’
flapping, loud laughing, crying and echolalia. Before the study, Nicu preferred to
play alone, never sharing toys spontaneously and was repelled by social activities,
like playing or learning together with other children. Due to these circumstances,
the target social skill to be developed was “sharing the toys” when playing together
with other children.

2.2  Procedure
For each of the four participants, the main experimenter together with the child’s
therapist and parents identified a specific social skill deficit. Then we selected the
following target skills: “sharing toys” (for two participants), saying “thank you”
and saying “hello”. An individualized Social Story was developed for each of the
skills. The stories were developed by the experimenters using Gray’s Social Story
construction guidelines (Gray 2000).

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 Bram Vanderborght et al.

The dependent variable measured for all the participants of the study was the
level of prompting needed to be offered by the therapist to the child, in order to
perform an appropriate social interaction on the three target skills.

2.2.1  Experimental task

An experimental task was developed for the child to exercise the social ability
targeted in his individualized social story. Our aim was to put the child to exercise
the target skill as naturally as possible. Consequently, three types of experimental
tasks were created, each of them different for the social skills targeted in the story,
as follows:

–– for sharing toys, a play session was organized for the participants together
with other children from the centre that were able to ask for a toy;
–– for saying “hello” the participant had to search for an object in different
rooms of the centre, where different therapists were sitting or spontaneously
entering; these therapists were trained to answer the child, if he was saying
“hello” to them;
–– for saying “thank you”, the therapist created different opportunities, like
receiving help or receiving a gift.

The Social Story intervention lasted on average 10 minutes for each child. The
duration of the experimental task was between 7 and 10 minutes, so that the maxi-
mum length of working with the child (intervention together with experimental
task) was about 20 minutes in total. Each child had only one session a day.

2.2.2  Level of prompting

The level of prompting needed for a target social skill was assessed during the
experimental task. The prompt can be offered in the following manner: for every
manner an example is given for the saying “hello” skill.

–– verbal manner, i.e. the therapist said the beginning of the required sentence to
the child (e.g. for saying “hello” the therapist said “Hel..”) ;
–– gestural manner, i.e. the therapist indicated with his/her finger, head or hands
specific elements of interest (e.g. the therapist pointed to the person to whom
the child had to say “hello”);
–– physical manner, i.e. the therapist used gentle movements to direct the child’s
head or hands toward specific elements of the therapeutic environment
(e.g. the therapist turned the head of the child to the person that entered in the
room, in order to help the child to remember that he had to greet).

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 Using the social robot Probo as a social story telling agent for children with ASD 

The level of prompting needed to perform an appropriate social interaction was

assessed using a 7-point scale as follows:

6 – no occurrence of the target behavior

5– occurrence of the target behavior with gestural, verbal and physical
prompting
4 – occurrence of the target behavior with physical and verbal prompting
3 – occurrence of the target behavior with gestural and verbal prompting
2 – occurrence of the target behavior with physical prompting
1 – occurrence of the target behavior with gestural prompting
0 – occurrence of the target behavior without any prompting

2.2.3  Appropriate social interaction

Examples of appropriate social interactions relevant for saying “hello” were initia-
tions of greeting when meeting or leaving a familiar person by saying “Hello! /
Good morning! / Goodbye! / Bye-Bye!”. For saying “thank you” the child had to
detect correctly when in the context he had to say “thank you”. For “sharing toys”
the child had to share his toy when he was asked to by another child. Visual contact
and the absence of self-stimulating behaviors are minimal necessary conditions
for assessing a social interaction as appropriate. Non-examples include inappro-
priate verbal responses and the presence of self-stimulating behaviors.

2.2.4  Research design

Because the aim of our study was to test on specific cases whether the social
Probo can increase the therapeutic value of the Social Story method, we used
the single case-experiment design (Tawney 1984; Neuman 1995; Janosky 2009;
Todman 2009). More specifically, a counterbalanced design ABAC/ACAB design
was chosen in order to compare two different interventions on the same subject.
In the case of our study, we are dealing with a reversible behavior (as a depen-
dent variable). For such cases, single-case experiment literature recommends the
use of a design from the reversal designs family, which in this case is the ABAC
design (Neuman 1995).
Phase A (Baseline). In this phase each child was exposed to the experimental
task, without receiving the Social Story intervention. Observers collected base-
line data during several observation sessions for each participant. If the partici-
pant engaged in a social interaction, the therapist provided the minimum level of
prompting needed for successfully performing the target behavior: saying “hello”,
saying “thank you” or “sharing toys”. For the baseline phases, we stopped the ses-
sions when data collection stability was reached. This resulted in a variable number

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 Bram Vanderborght et al.

between 6 and 10 sessions between the participants. No other interventions were

included during this phase.
The second baseline level (ABAC/ACAB) was made between the two phases
of interventions. The level of prompting was measured the same way as described
above.
Phase B (Social Story). In this phase the social story was told to the chil-
dren by the therapist. The stories were introduced in the same way to each
child, by using an introductory statement (i.e. “Today we will listen together
to a story”). Social Story reading was followed by a set of comprehensive ques-
tions with the purpose of assessing participants’ understanding of the story
and followed by the experimental task. After the therapist had told the story,
the child had to exercise the social ability that was targeted in the story in the
experimental task described above. In phase B there were always 8 sessions for
all the participants.
Phase C (Social Story and RAT). Before this phase, we had a habituation
period with the robot. There were some interactions between the child and
the robot mediated by the therapist in order to get familiar with the robot. For
example, the robot was sleeping and the child had to wake it up, or the robot
was sad and the child had to hug it to make it happy. The children could also ask
questions to the robot, which the robot answered by nodding or shaking its head
to indicate yes or no. The length of this habituation phase was different from
child to child and reduced when the child received more interventions with the
robot. The session began in an identical way for every child. The robot was on
a table in a corner of the room (Fig. 2). The child and the therapist entered
together in the room, the habituation was offered and the therapist prepared the
child for the social story after which the robot started to tell the story. The robot
also expressed the emotions that were included in the story: “happy” and “sad”
and moved its head, eyes and trunk. Similar to phase B, after the robot had told
the story, the child had to exercise the social ability that was targeted in the story
in the experimental task described above. The children received 6 interventions
with the robot.

2.2.5  Data collection

After obtaining a signed parental consent, all the sessions were video-taped for
further analysis. Three graduate students in clinical psychology were trained by
the experimenter, in order to score the videos, using measurements of the level of
prompting. The training consisted in giving clear definitions of the targeted social
skills (i.e. the behavioral elements defining these skills), by offering examples and
counter-examples for each category and by having them observe appropriate

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 Using the social robot Probo as a social story telling agent for children with ASD 

behaviors of social interaction in typical developed peers during free time

activities. The inter-observer agreement was analyzed during the training sessions
in order to validate our observational categories previous to the start of the actual
research. The training continued until the inter-observer agreement reached 80%
on two consecutive observations during training sessions. For each session, three
observers rated the level of prompting needed by each child to perform the appro-
priate social interaction. Inter-observer agreement was measured by assessing the
level of agreement and disagreement for 40% of the observations sessions during
both baseline and intervention (Scattone 2006). Agreements were scored when
all observers had agreed whether an appropriate social interaction on the target
skill occurred or not. Disagreements were scored when observers did not agree on
the occurrence of an appropriate social interaction during an observation session.
Inter-observer agreement (Cohen’s Kappa) was higher than 0.80 in all the cases.

2.3  Materials
2.3.1  The social robot Probo
Probo embodies a stuffed imaginary animal, providing a soft touch and a hug-
gable appearance (Goris et al. 2011). The robot is designed to act as a social inter-
face by employing human-like social cues and communication modalities. With
20 motors in the head, the robot is able to express attention and emotions via
its gaze and facial expressions (Saldien et  al. 2010). To guarantee a safe physi-
cal interaction between the robot and the children, compliant actuation systems
and a layered structure with foam and fabric, are implemented (Goris et al. 2011).
A user friendly Robot Control Center (RCC) enables the operator to control the
robot in a Wizard of Oz setting (Landauer 1986; Wilson 1988). In such a setup,
the child cannot see whether the robot is autonomously controlled or whether a
human operator is controlling the robot. This allows concentrating the investi-
gation on the interaction itself and achieving a higher level of social interaction
without the actual need to implement a higher level of intelligence, which accord-
ing to the current state-of-the-art is still impossible. Moreover, such a Wizard of
Oz approach allows instantaneous adaptation to unexpected behavior/reaction of
the child. This approach also fits with the ethical considerations raised by some
authors (Feil-Seifer 2010). In the future, when the fundamental underlying prin-
ciples of RAT are better understood one can develop more autonomously working
robots that can be controlled by the therapists themselves.
The Animation module (Saldien et al. Under review) allows assembling and
managing sequences of motions inspired by the creators of computer anima-
tions. The operator can use a toolkit to create key-framed motion sequences and
use them to build larger animations. In this study, an appropriate animation for

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 Bram Vanderborght et al.

each social story was c­ reated beforehand; to generate the correct emotion and
motion of the trunk, neck and other available DOFs. The different animations
for the habituation phase (sleeping, eye-blink, nodding or shaking the head,
saying “excellent” or “well done”) were also preprogrammed in the Animation
module. The voice of Probo (i.e. a neutral male voice) was prerecorded on an
audio file and played during the story telling. To create the sensation of natural
lip motions during speech, a lip-sync module was implemented in the Anima-
tion module to match the lip movements with the voice. A commercial software
package analyzes the different phonemes from the audio file. Every phoneme
corresponds then to a certain percentage of mouth opening. The “AA” opens the
mouth completely while e.g. the “m” is a sound that purses the mouth the most.
The two other degrees of freedom (the mouth corners) are not used for lip-sync,
only for showing the emotions. The Gaze module makes the eyes and head look
to a certain point of attention by clicking the desired gaze point of the robot on
the Full Area View of the Graphical User Interface (GUI). As such the robot
could look at the child and the therapist.
The robot operator was sitting in another room (see Fig. 4). From the robot’s
camera the operator could see what was happening in the therapy room and he
could also hear the communication to choose the appropriate actions for the
robot. The software components are made visible to the operator in an intui-
tive GUI as shown in Fig. 5. This Robot Control Center (RCC) has a virtual 3D
model of Probo (Fig. 5 right top) that simulates all the movements of the robot
and provides visual feedback of the robot during operation. During the inter-
vention the robot was operated using an Xbox 360 controller to control the emo-
tions, motion of trunk and preprogrammed animations. The start of the social
story and the point of attention of the gazing was controlled using a mouse in
the GUI.

Figure 4.  Social Story designed for Mihnea to say “hello” when he enters a room where
­someone is present, based on Gray’s Social Story construction guidelines (Gray 2000)

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 Using the social robot Probo as a social story telling agent for children with ASD 

Figure 5.  Robot Control Center (RCC) is used to control Probo in an intuitive way. The struc-
ture of the figure is the following: left top - the settings for the Xbox controller; right top –
the virtual 3D model of Probo; left down - the emotion space with valence and arousal; right
down - different tabs with the visible tab indicating the selection of the storytelling ST1 sequence
and its accompanying sound. Also, during the interaction, Probo’s eyes blink and it flaps its ears.
The bottom of the figure shows the buttons to start animations like sleeping, saying yes or no,…
that can be selected by pushing numbers on the keyboard or with the Xbox controller. The other
tabs are the gazing module, touch sensor information, a sequence editor to create animations,…

3.  Results

Data were analyzed using SPSS version 16. We used the U Mann-Whitney test to
analyze the differences between the baseline and the interventions and between the
two types of interventions respectively: Social Story (phase B) and Social Story with
RAT (phase C). The choice of the non-parametric U Mann-Whitney test was moti-
vated by its assumptions-free characteristic, and also by the type of the design of
our exploratory investigation, i.e. a single-study experiment. The dependent variable
(i.e. performance) was the level of prompting needed for the children to perform the
requested social action at the end of each intervention session. The level of perfor-
mance for the different intervention phases are presented as box plots and a visual
representation over the different sessions is provided for each subject in Figures 6–8.

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 Bram Vanderborght et al.

6.00 A B A C

5.00

4.00

3.00

2.00

1.00

0.00

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 101112131415161718192021222324252627282930
Sessions

Antonia
6.00

5.00
25th percentile
Level of prompt

4.00 Minimum
Mean
3.00 50th percentile
2.00 Maximum
75th percentile
1.00

0.00
A B A C
Phase

Figure 6.  Visual representation and box plot of the data collected for Antonia during the
baseline and intervention phases. The y axis indicates the values of the level of prompting.
The x axis indicates the number of the session and the intervention phases (A = baseline phase;
B = Social Story intervention phase; C = Social Story and RAT intervention phase)

3.1  Data analysis for Antonia

The target social skill for Antonia’s case was sharing toys. The dependent variable
was the level of prompting needed for Antonia to share the toys at the end of each
intervention session.

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 Using the social robot Probo as a social story telling agent for children with ASD 

3.1.1  V isual analysis of the data collected during baseline and intervention
phases for Antonia
We performed several measurements of the level of prompting in the first base-
line phase, aiming to reach a stable value. A stable value of 3 was reached after
five consecutive measurements (Phase A; Fig. 6). After reaching this stable value,
we introduced the Social Story intervention (phase B; Fig. 6). When a stable value
of the level of prompting was reached (e.g. a stable value of 2 was obtained after five
consecutive measurements), the intervention was withdrawn. In the next baseline
level (phase A), after an initial slight fluctuation, the level of prompting has reached a
stable value of 3 (after four consecutive measurements). This stable value of the level
of prompting has allowed us to introduce the second intervention (Social Story and
RAT; phase C, Fig. 6). The graph analysis indicates that the introduction of the Social
Story and RAT intervention was associated with a decrease in the level of prompting
Antonia needed to share the toys (e.g prompting level values of two or lower than
two; phase C, Fig. 6). Also, these values were lower than those measured during the
baseline phases and during the phase B (Social Story intervention). In conclusion,
the visual analysis of Antonia’s data indicates that both interventions were associated
with a decrease of the level of prompting. However, the Social Story and RAT inter-
vention had a stronger effect on decreasing the level of prompting than the Social
Story intervention, especially since phase C is after Phase B. With Probo only ges-
tural prompts were required to engage Antonia in the appropriate social interaction.

3.1.2  S tatistical analysis of the data collected during baseline and intervention
phases for Antonia
The analyses revealed there were no differences between baselines 1 and 2
(phase A). As a consequence we decided to compare in the case for Antonia only
three conditions and used the Bonferroni correction for three conditions which
gives a p = 0.016. We used a U Mann-Whitney test with the Bonferroni correction
to perform a comparative analysis of the data collected during the baseline phases
and during the two intervention phases. Statistically significant differences were
registered between the level of prompting measured during the baseline phase (A)
and during the Social Story intervention phase (B), U = 18.88, Z = -3.00, p = 0.001,
and between the level of prompting measured during the baseline phase (A) and
the Social Story and RAT intervention phase (C), U = 2, Z = -3.53, p = 0.001.
No statistically significant differences were obtained between the two types of
interventions (e.g. Social Story and Social Story and RAT), U = 8.5, Z = -2.16,
p = 0.03. A Bonferroni correction was used to avoid a type I error, which means
the possibility of identifying an effect where there is actually no effect (a false posi-
tive). This means that this is a conservative approach, which in case of more than
3 conditions can raise the probability of a type II error (identifying no effect where

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 Bram Vanderborght et al.

actually there is an effect). So without this Bonferroni correction, there would be a

significant difference between phase B and C.

3.2  Data analysis for Georgia

The target social skill in Georgia’s case was saying “thank” you. The dependent
variable (i.e. performance) was the level of prompting needed for Georgia to per-
form the target behavior at the end of each intervention session.

4.00 A B A C

3.00

2.00

1.00

0.00

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
Sessions

Georgia
6.00

5.00
25th percentile
Level of prompt

4.00 Minimum
Mean
3.00
50th percentile
2.00 Maximum
75th percentile
1.00

0.00
A B A C
Phase

Figure 7.  Visual representation and box plot of the data collected for Georgia during the
baseline and intervention phases. The y axis indicates the values of the level of prompting.
The x axis indicates the number of the session and the intervention phases (A = baseline phase;
B = Social Story intervention phase; C = Social Story and RAT intervention phase)

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 Using the social robot Probo as a social story telling agent for children with ASD 

3.2.1  V isual analysis of the data collected for Georgia during the baseline and the
intervention phases
Similar to Antonia’s case, in the baseline phase A for Georgia, we performed sev-
eral measurements of the level of prompting until a stable value was reached (e.g. a
value of 3; see Fig. 7, phase A). When this stable value was reached, we introduced
the Social Story intervention. After a descendent trend, the level of prompting has
reached a stable value of 1, which allowed performing the withdrawal of the inter-
vention. During the second baseline phase A (see Fig. 7), we continued to measure
the level of prompting until a stable value of 2 was reached, which was followed by
the introduction of the Social Story with RAT intervention. The introduction of
this intervention was associated, after a slight fluctuation, with a stable value of 0,
which indicates that Georgia was able to perform the target behavior without any
type of prompting coming from the therapist. In conclusion, the graph analysis of
Georgia’s data indicates better performances of the target behavior during the two
intervention phases as compared to the baseline phases. Similar to Antonia’s case,
compared to the Social Story intervention, the Social Story with RAT intervention
appeared to have a stronger effect on the decrease of the level of prompting Geor-
gia needed to say “thank you” in specific social situations. With Probo, Georgia
was mostly able to say thank you independently and spontaneously, without the
need of any type of prompting.

3.2.2  S tatistical analysis of the data collected for Georgia during the baseline and
the intervention phases
The analyses revealed there were no differences between baseline 1 and 2 (phase A).
As a consequence we decided to compare in the case for Antonia only three condi-
tions and used the Bonferroni correction for three conditions which gives a p =
0.016. We used a U Mann-Whitney test with the Bonferroni correction to perform
a comparative analysis of the data collected during the baseline phases and dur-
ing the two intervention phases. Statistically significant differences were observed
between the baseline phase (A) and the Social Story intervention (B), U = 6.0, Z = -
3.73, p = 0.001, as well as between the baseline phase (A) and the Social Story
with RAT intervention (C), U = 0.00, Z = -3.68, p = 0.001. Also, our analysis indi-
cates that, compared to the Social Story intervention, the Social Story with RAT
intervention had a statistically stronger effect on decreasing the level of prompting
Georgia needed to perform the target behavior (U = 6, Z = -2.53, p = 0.011).

3.3  Data analysis for Mihnea

The target social skill in Mihnea’s case was saying “Hello” to a social partner. The
dependent variable (i.e. performance) was the level of prompting needed for
­Mihnea to perform the target behavior at the end of each intervention session.

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 Bram Vanderborght et al.

3.00 A C A B

2.50

2.00

1.50

1.00

0.50

0.00

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
Sessions

Mihnea
6.00

5.00
Level of prompt

25th percentile
4.00 Minimum
3.00 Mean
50th percentile
2.00 Maximum
75th percentile
1.00

0.00
A C A B
Phase

Figure 8.  Visual representation and box plot of the data collected for Mihnea during the
baseline and intervention phases. The y axis indicates the values of the level of prompting. The
x axis indicates the number of the session and the intervention phases (A = baseline phase;
B = Social Story intervention phase; C = Social Story and RAT intervention phase)

3.3.1  V
 isual analysis of the data collected for Mihnea during the baseline
and the intervention phases
As seen in Fig. 8, in Mihnea’s case, as soon as we introduced the first intervention
(e.g. Social Story with RAT, phase C), the level of prompting decreased from a
value of 2 to values of 1 and 0 (with fluctuations between these two values). On the
second baseline phase (see Fig. 8, phase A), after initially reaching a value similar

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 Using the social robot Probo as a social story telling agent for children with ASD 

to the ones measured on the first baseline, the level of prompting reached a stable
value of 1, which allowed us to introduce the Social Story intervention (phase B).
Phase B was initially associated with fluctuating values of the level of prompting,
followed by a stable value of 0. In conclusion, the graph analysis in Mihnea’s case
indicates a stronger effect on the decreasing of the level of prompting of the Social
Story with RAT intervention, as compared to the Social Story intervention. Espe-
cially since Phase C was before phase B and during the second baseline phase A,
Mihnea was able to say “hello” when he entered a room where someone was pres-
ent with mostly only gestural prompts. Already in Phase C Mihnea was able to say
“hello” spontaneously in half of the trials.

3.3.2  S tatistical analysis of the data collected for Mihnea during the baseline
and the intervention phases
In this case, because of the fluctuating values of the level of prompting registered
during the second baseline phase (see Fig. 8), the aggregation of the data collected
during the two baseline phases was not possible. As a consequence we decided
for the case of Mihnea to treat the two baselines as two separate conditions. Thus,
we used a U Mann-Whitney test with Bonferroni correction for four conditions
(p) = 0.008). Statistically significant differences were registered between the first
baseline phase A and the Social Story with RAT intervention (phase C), U = 3.0,
Z = -3.00, p = 0.003. No differences were registered between the second baseline
phase (A) and the Social Story intervention (B; U = 24, Z = -0.48, p = 0.62), nor
between the two interventions (phase B and phase C; U = 18.5, Z = -0.38, p = 0.70).

3.4  Data analysis for Nicu

The target behavior in Nicu’s case was sharing toys. The dependent variable (i.e.
performance) was the level of prompting Nicu needed to perform the target
behavior at the end of each intervention session.

3.4.1  V  isual analysis of the data collected for Nicu during the baseline
and the intervention phases
After reaching a stable value of 4 of the level of prompting measured during the
baseline phase A (see Fig. 9), we introduced the Social Story and RAT interven-
tion. This intervention was associated with a decrease of the level of prompting
(e.g. fluctuating values between 2 and 3). Compared to the second baseline phase,
the introduction of the Social Story intervention (phase B) was associated with a
decrease of the level of prompting, but not as pronounced as in the case of Social
Story and RAT phase (see Fig. 9).

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 Bram Vanderborght et al.

3.4.2  S tatistical analysis of the data collected for Nicu during the baseline
and the intervention phases
Similar to the previous case, because of the fluctuating values of the level of
prompting registered during the second baseline phase (see Fig. 9), the aggrega-
tion of the data collected during the two baseline phases was not possible. As a

6.00 A C A B

5.00

4.00

3.00

2.00

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
Sessions

Nicu
6.00

5.00
Level of prompt

25th percentile
4.00 Minimum
3.00 Mean
50th percentile
2.00 Maximum
75th percentile
1.00

0.00
A C A B
Phase

Figure 9.  Visual representation and box plot of the data collected for Nicu during the baseline
and intervention phases. The y axis indicates the values of the level of prompting. The x axis in-
dicates the number of the session and the intervention phases (A = baseline phase; B = Social
Story intervention phase; C = Social Story and RAT intervention phase)

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 Using the social robot Probo as a social story telling agent for children with ASD 

consequence we decided in the case of Nicu to treat the two baselines as two sepa-
rate conditions. Thus, we used a U Mann-Whitney test with Bonferroni correc-
tion for four conditions (p = 0.008). Compared to the first baseline phase (A), the
Social Story with RAT intervention (phase C) was associated with a statistically
significant decrease of the level of prompting (U = 0, Z = -3.17, p = 0.001). No
significant differences were found between the second baseline phase (A) and the
Social Story intervention (phase B; U = 19.5, Z = -1.41, p = 0.15), nor between the
two interventions (phase B and phase C; U = 18, Z = -0.84, p = 0.39).

4.  Discussion

In the presented work we focused on improving social abilities of children with

ASD by using two methods: RAT and Social Stories. This study is an exploratory
investigation as to whether an enriched social environment (the presence of the
social robot Probo) would improve the effectiveness of the Social Stories interven-
tion in increasing the level of social interaction of four preschool children with
ASD. Several studies conclude that robots can help children with ASD develop
their social and play abilities. This is the first time that the social robot Probo is
being tested as a potential Social Story telling agent in the context of therapeutic
settings for autistic children. Even though it is generally known that autistic chil-
dren show preferences toward non-humans agents such as robots, our aim is not
to replace humans with robots, but to mediate the interaction between the child
and the human therapist.
The analysis of our data indicates that, compared to the Social Story interven-
tion, the Social Story with RAT intervention had a stronger effect on decreasing
the level of prompting the therapist needed to offer to each child in order for the
child to perform the target behavior for all the participants. The experiments were
performed using the social robot Probo, which has been designed as a research
platform to perform human-robot interaction studies and develop robot assisted
therapies with the special target group of children. The capability of the robot to
clearly show different emotions, facial expressions and animations by 20 DOFs
in the head might be responsible for the effects of the robot on the social perfor-
mances of these four autistic children, but this is a subject of further investigations
in more extended experiments, such as randomized clinical trials. Since the robot
is powered by compliant actuators and is made of soft materials and fur, the robot
provides a safe and pleasant physical contact, such as hugs.
Our study indicates that, compared to the situation when the Social
Story is told by a human therapist, the Social Story told by the robot leads to
a higher decrease in the level of prompting the therapist has to offer to the

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 Bram Vanderborght et al.

ASD c­ hildren in order to perform the appropriate social response. The greatest
achievement of our work is the fact that children improved their social abilities
and that they are capable of using the abilities learned during the intervention
in a social task, taking into account the special and individual needs of the
participants of this study.
The statistical analysis used a conservative approach with a Bonferroni cor-
rection (to avoid type 1 error) and indicates that a significant difference between
the two interventions (in favor of the Social Story with RAT intervention) appears
in only one out of the four participants of the study (e.g. ABAC design). How-
ever, when comparing the efficiency of the two interventions taking the baseline
phase as a point of reference, our results indicate the superiority of the Social Story
with RAT intervention (e.g. the Social Story with RAT intervention was associ-
ated with a statistically significant decrease of the level of prompt the participants
needed to perform the target behavior). Also, in the case of the robot, in one of the
interventions, no prompting was necessary and a spontaneous engagement in the
appropriate social interaction was obtained. Our findings are in line with previous
results on the effectiveness of RAT in enhancing the social interaction, motivation
and communication skills of children with ASD.
Moreover, the two therapists involved in this study offered valuable feedback
on the design of the robot. Even though this is not quantified data, it includes use-
ful comments for designing other social robots or improving the existing ones.
The size of the robot appears to be appropriate for interaction with children as
is the relative size of the head compared to the body so it is easy for the children
to focus their attention on the facial expressions. The face area (eyes and month)
is not really a triangle, but rather a rectangle, which probably needs more attention
resources than a triangle does. Also, it was suggested that a shorter trunk would
increase the visibility of the facial expressions of Probo, so the mouth would be
more visible to the children when the trunk is in the down position. The color
seems to be a good one, as the therapists did not notice any remarks or negative
reactions to the green color of Probo’s coat. A demonstration was held for the
other children of the autism center and we observed that even for the ones who
had problems with touching and being touched, at the end of the session they were
able to touch and interact with the robot. Overall, our study indicates that Probo
has an inviting appearance for children with ASD.
Future work includes performing more therapy sessions with the robot, so the
next step would be to bring this exploratory investigation to the level of random-
ized-clinical trials conditions. We also aim to construct a novel version of Probo
with actuated arms to extend the range of stories with e.g. learning to give hugs,
pointing to objects. One of the current limits of the Social Story and RAT inter-
vention is that the story is played on the robot without interruption, so the thera-
pist cannot stop the story when necessary. Our goal is to overcome this technical

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 Using the social robot Probo as a social story telling agent for children with ASD 

limitation by introducing more interactive stories, so that the robot can respond
to the actions and the reactions of a child during the presentation of the social sto-
ries. Even though no generalization is yet permitted, our results open the door to
extended experiments, such as randomized clinical trials, aimed at rigorously test-
ing the therapeutic value of the social robot Probo in the context of Social Stories
procedure for autistic children.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Autism Transylvania Therapy Center for the hospitality which allowed
them to perform the experiments. This work was supported by CNCSIS-Bucharest, Romania
project PN-II-ID-PCE-2011-3-0484 and VUB-HOA16.

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Authors’ addresses
Prof. Dr. ir. Bram Vanderborght Cristina Pop
Vrije Universiteit Brussel Babes-Bolyai University
Robotics Research Group Department of Clinical Psychology and
Pleinlaan 2 Psychotherapy
1050 Brussel Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Belgium
pop.cristina@ubbcluj.ro
Babes-Bolyai University
Department of Clinical Psychology and Prof. Alina S. Rusu
Psychotherapy Babes-Bolyai University
Cluj-Napoca Department of Clinical Psychology
Romania and Psychotherapy
Cluj-Napoca, Romania
bram.vanderborght@vub.ac.be
alinarusu@psychology.ro

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 Bram Vanderborght et al.

Ramona Simut Sebastian Pintea

Vrije Universiteit Brussel Babes-Bolyai University
Robotics Research Group Department of Clinical Psychology and
Pleinlaan 2 Psychotherapy
1050 Brussel Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Belgium
sebastianpintea@psychology.ro
ramona.simut@vub.ac.be
Dirk Lefeber
Ramona Simut Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Babes-Bolyai University Robotics Research Group
Department of Clinical Psychology and Pleinlaan 2
Psychotherapy 1050 Brussel, Belgium
Cluj-Napoca
dirk.lefeber@vub.ac.be
Romania

ramonasimut@psychology.ro Prof. Daniel O. David

Jelle Saldien
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Robotics Research Group
Pleinlaan 2
1050 Brussel, Belgium
Babes-Bolyai University
Department of Clinical Psychology and
Psychotherapy
Cluj-Napoca, Romania
danieldavid@psychology.ro

jelle.saldien@vub.ac.be

Jelle Saldien
3 Howest University College
Industrial Design Center
Kortrijk
Belgium

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