Leveraging curiosity to encourage social interactions in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: preliminary results using the interactive toy PlusMe

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a set of neurodevelopmental conditions, often characterised by important impairments in the social area. In the context of early intervention, we present preliminary results about the social behaviour of children with ASD using PlusMe as an experimental interactive toy, which is the first prototype of Transitional Wearable Companions concept. Specifically, PlusMe is designed to stimulate the children's curiosity and encourage behaviour on the basis of social interaction. The pilot test involved five high-functioning children, mean age 41 months, range 36-50 months. The participants were engaged in play activities together with the PlusMe toy and two researchers who aimed to encourage the children's social behaviour such as imitation and eye contact; the activities were repeated for four sessions (one per week). Although it is an ongoing study on a larger sample, the first data analysis is promising, preliminary observations seem to demonstrate that PlusMe can be used to improve some social behaviour such as eye contact, imitation, the interaction between two people.