Ted_G, Thanks for the link. I'm going to look it up in just a moment. I caught the comment, too, that the technology is being geared towards institutional use, but even children in institutions must receive an education, which, given the circumstances, is almost always special ed. In fact, most institutions where children with autism are placed are classified as non-public schools with a residential placement component specifically for the purpose of special ed. The exception would be private placements in which parents have unilaterally placed their children. The private placements have to provide appropriate educational components that comply with state laws, as well. There's no getting away from special ed just by putting a kid in an institution - unless somebody's breaking the law. So, my question about the use of research-based programming being required in special ed is still applicable to institutionalized children. If I can find out the answer, I'll post again here and/or to our blog at http://www.kps4parents.org/blog. THANKS!!!! Anne, KPS4Parents

Thank you for your comment. With regards to your question, it was mentioned that this technology is aimed toward institutional use at the moment. Consider that it might be worth touching base with the people at < http://beatbots.net/about-us/ > to see if they are aware of any peer-reviewed research being done in that area, if any.

Presumably the therapeutic model includes generalizing the social skills learned using the beatbot to actual people. This takes a lot of finesse. Many children who have started out with socialization through avatars and other technology-based solutions have decided they prefer interacting with technology rather than people and a whole host of new behaviors present in which it becomes necessary to ween them off of the technology solutions, which made them feel successful and thus they don't want to give up, and actually apply what they've learned to live human beings. I can see the benefit of a tool like this with severely autistic children who have no concept of social interaction at all so long as there is a built-in component to bridge the skill sets learned into real-life human interactions as well. What peer-reviewed research is being done into the efficacy of this approach, particularly given that only research-based interventions are supposed to be used in special education?