A New Revolution in Teaching Autistic Children – Using Humanlike Robots

An attempt is being made in this direction by Professor Nilanjan Sarkar and his team at the Vanderbilt University. His team has designed a robot-based basketball base. The game contains a hoop that moves with various rhythms, through which the children are supposed to throw differently colored balls. The activity is accompanied with different kinds of music to keep the child better engrossed. The child is made to wear several sensors that measure elements like their heart beat and the extent of their muscle twitching. This conveys to the robot whether the child is at ease or getting frustrated. Based on that, the robot changes its tempo of the game. This creates in the child a kind of cause-effect understanding. They understand what might happen if they carry out a particular action. This can give a clear insight into what working with autistic children is like.

A new revolution in teaching autistic children is quickly gaining momentum – training assistive robots to act as their tutors. There are many advantages in doing this, especially the fact that robots can be much more patient than any human can.

Dr. Nancy Snyderman (NBC Today Show) reports on researchers are developing ways to treat autistic children with robots.

What you should know before you start teaching autistic children

I would like to share my experiences here of being an autistic person. The most significant thing for any autistic person like me is that they see the whole world somewhat differently. Our minds don’t work as fast. We are somewhat slower than other people. We may take twice the amount of time to understand things than normal individuals do. If something new comes our way, we need to read it twice so that we make sure we understand it completely. Even though we try to get things right the first time itself, they don’t sink in. We need to read things a second time.

The important thing for us is to understand and accept what we are. I am realistic about what I am. I know that I will have to go through things again, so I don’t take it as a pain. I know that when I read things the first time, it is only my outer brain accepting the facts, but for my autistic inner brain to digest what I have read, I have to read it again. Today, I am comfortable with this reality. Do not think that I am reading something by-heart when I read it over and over again. I am only trying to understand it by doing so.

Another thing is that I need to pay special attention to some parts of whatever material I read. There are things that my superficial brain just goes through and I need to read it again just for my brain to process it. A decade ago, when I was trying to come to grips with the English language, my brain underwent these processes. I had a tutor, but she was interested in merely giving me the basic material I needed to have some conversational knowledge of the language. I felt the deficiency there. I realized that I would need to put in some more effort in order to understand the language properly.

I did not get the kind of personal attention from my tutor that I was hoping for. But for an autistic person like me, personal attention is what makes all the difference.


www.howtoteachautisticchildren.com

THINKING IN PICTURES: Autism and Visual Thought

THINKING IN PICTURES: Autism and Visual Thought: "There is then a subcategory of jokes that can only be told to close friends. When I was a teenager I was called 'tape recorder' because I used scripted lines. As I gained experience, my conversation became less scripted because I could combine new information in new ways. To help understand the autistic brain I recommend that teachers and parents should play with an Internet search engine such as Google for images. It will give people who are more verbal thinkers an understanding into how visual associative thinking works. People with music and math minds have a search engine that finds associations between patterns and numbers."

This is so very true. Dr. Temple Grandin tells something that is so real, as my own experiences show. We think with pictures. In my mind, I still have an image of a poem printed on my school wall. But, though I remember that image, I don’t remember what the poem was about.


www.howtoteachautisticchildren.com