ROBIN

Children with autism spectrum disorder often exhibit atypical imitative abilities: this is far from insignificant, as imitation is one of the drivers of social learning.

 

The ROBIN project, through a randomized clinical trial on children aged 18-48 months, is investigating the effectiveness of integrating the humanoid robot NAO into the standard neuropsychomotor intervention offered by the National Health Service. NAO proposes new gestures and mirrors the child's actions in real time, following the "being imitated" strategy, to stimulate gaze, proximity, and play. Combining clinical assessments, motion tracking, neuroimaging (f-NIRS), and eye tracking, the project verifies the benefits on imitation, neural correlates, and their generalization to human interaction.

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ROBIN is coordinated by the Don Carlo Gnocchi Foundation IRCCS (Department of Child Neuropsychiatry and Rehabilitation), which oversees recruitment, rehabilitation interventions, and clinical and neuroimaging data collection. In collaboration with the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan (Department of Psychology), which is responsible for the eye-tracking study and oversees the social robotics approach. The research team is led by Giulia Purpura (Principal Investigator), with Silvia Annunziata (Co-PI, child neuropsychiatrist), and Federico Manzi (head of the CeRiToM Local Unit for the eye-tracking study).