Hi everyone, I'm Fabio Catania from Politecnico di Milano (Italy) and I want to tell you about
this exploratory study on the use of Google Assistant during one-on-one therapy for children
with neurodevelopmental disorders.
In more detail I will talk about the motivations and reasons that led us to conduct this study.
I will present our research questions, the approach we took to answer them, and the results
we found and our conclusion.
To date, Intelligent Personal Assistants, such as Google Assistant, are widely used
in several application domains.
Neurodevelopmental Disorders is a group of conditions with onset in the developmental
period.
They typically produce impairments in personal, social, academic, and occupational functioning.
Neurodevelopmental disorder is a chronic state but early and focused interventions are thought
to mitigate its effect.
Recent research acknowledged interactive technology as a potentially useful tool to support standard
interventions, but so far, limited studies explored intelligent personal assistants among
people with neurodevelopmental disorders.
So, we wondered: How do therapists and children use Google
Assistant during therapy?
What are the benefits and the challenges during interventions supported with Google Assistant?
We conducted an exploratory study in a therapeutic center.
We involved 3 therapists and 9 children with neurodevelopmental disorders including low,
medium, and high severity.
We asked therapists to use two Google Home devices featured with Google Assistant during
therapeutic sessions with children for three weeks.
Therapists were free to use and let children use the assistant as they wished.
To gain multiple perspectives on how therapists and children used Google Assistant during
their one-to-one therapeutic sessions, we engaged them in a complementary methods study
involving History logs,
A questionnaire, Forms,
and a group interview.
At the end of the three weeks, participants used Google Assistant during 17 therapy sessions.
Therapists told us that they integrated the intelligent personal assistant into their
typical therapeutic activities, which varied in difficulty and type according to the subject.
Generally, activities with Google Assistant were suggested by the therapist.
History logs recorded in total 410 requests to the system.
The most frequent requests were related to "Play animals' cry, or natural rumors", to
"Play, or stop music", to set alarms or timers, and to tune the volume.
Less frequently, participants used Google Assistant for asking the time, asking for
information, and checking the weather or asking questions about interpersonal relationships,
for example "How to greet a person when you meet her or him for the first time?”.
From the questionnaires, forms and the group interview, it emerged that Google Assistant
has the potential for being used as a stimulus for oral communication and socialization in
many activities with children from low to high severity.
It is important to mention that children had difficulties while interacting with Google
Assistant in composing a sentence made by two parts of speech that are not semantically
connected: the wake word ("Hey Google") and the request.
Also, Google Assistant often misunderstood what participants asked due to both technological
limitations and children's language impairments.
Consequently, considering children's cognitive, sensory, and language fatigue in interacting
autonomously with Google Assistant, we conclude that to date Google Assistant could be considered
a tool for therapists, who may eventually decide to invite children to use it.