Results

Effect of Interactional condition on total speech of participants

 Interactional condition was found to have a significant effect on the total number of
participant utterances (ANOVA, F (1.9, 33.4) = 8.13, p < 0.001).
 T-tests showed participants produced more utterances with robot (M = 43.0, SD = 19.4)
than with adult interactional conditions (M = 36.8, SD = 19.2, t(23) = 1.97, p < 0.05) and
that robot and adult interactional conditions produced more utterances than the
touchscreen computer game condition (M = 25.2, SD = 13.4, t(23) = 3.61, p < 0.001).

Effect of interactional condition on participant speech towards confederate

 Interactional condition was found to have a significant effect on the number of
participant utterances directed toward the confederate (ANOVA, F (1.8, 33.0) = 3.46, p <
0.05).
 T-tests show participants with ASD directed a higher number of utterances towards their
confederate in the robot (M = 29.5, SD = 16.6) than in the adult interactional condition
(M = 25.5, SD = 15.5), t (23) = 1.87, p < 0.05) and more in both the robot (t(23) = 3.05, p
< 0.01) and adult (t(23) = 2.15, p < 0.01) than the game condition (M = 20.5, SD = 10.1).

Effect of interactional condition on participant speech: comparison between robot, adult

and game interaction partners
 The number of utterances directed towards the interaction partner was found to vary
depending on interactional condition (ANOVA, F(1.5, 26.9) = 15.20, p < 0.001).
 T-tests show there were significantly more utterances directed towards the robot (t(23)
= 5.40, p < 0.001) and the adult interaction partners (t(23) = 8.22, p < 0.001) than
towards the touchscreen computer game.
 However, there was no difference between the number of utterances directed towards
the interaction partner in the robot (M = 13.5, SD = 12.0) and adult conditions (M = 13.5,
SD = 7.8); (t(23) = 0.02).