Effects of Social Robotics on Episodic Memory in Children With Intellectual Disabilities

Abstract

Episodic memory is crucial to develop complex cognitive abilities like learning or reasoning, and non-complex cognitive abilities like calling the name of someone or remembering an appointment. It is known that an intellectual disability implies a deficit over tasks related to episodic memory, however, in the literature, there is no approach to stimulate episodic memory in children with intellectual disabilities. Because interactions with social robots have generated positive effects in children with intellectual disabilities, we propose an approach composed of three training sessions based on social robotics. In this paper, we present an exploratory study to know the effects of our approach on episodic memory in children with intellectual disabilities. The results have shown that our approach can enhance episodic memory in these children when they interact with interest and improve their performance in sessions.