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SUMMARY:Children-Agent Interaction For Assessment and Rehabilitation: From
  Linguistic Skills To Mental Well-being - Dr Micole Spitale\, Department o
 f Computer Science and Technology
DTSTART:20230207T160000Z
DTEND:20230207T170000Z
UID:TALK194482@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr Dervila Glynn
DESCRIPTION:*Theme: Brains and Machines*\n\n*Abstract:* Socially Assistive
  Robots (SARs) have shown great potential to help children in therapeutic 
 and healthcare contexts. SARs have been used for companionship\, learning 
 enhancement\, social and communication skills rehabilitation for children 
 with special needs (e.g.\, autism)\, and mood improvement. Robots can be u
 sed as novel tools to assess and rehabilitate children's communication ski
 lls and mental well-being by providing affordable and accessible therapeut
 ic and mental health services.\n\nIn this talk\, I will present the variou
 s studies I have conducted during my PhD and at the Cambridge Affective In
 telligence and Robotics Lab to explore how robots can help assess and reha
 bilitate children's communication skills and mental well-being. More speci
 fically\, I will provide both quantitative and qualitative results and fin
 dings from (i) an exploratory study with children with autism and global d
 evelopmental disorders to investigate the use of intelligent personal assi
 stants in therapy\; (ii) an empirical study involving children with and wi
 thout language disorders interacting with a physical robot\, a virtual age
 nt\, and a human counterpart to assess their linguistic skills\; (iii) an 
 8-week longitudinal study involving children with autism and language diso
 rders who interacted either with a physical or a virtual robot to rehabili
 tate their linguistic skills\; and (iv) an empirical study to aid the asse
 ssment of mental well-being in children. \n\nThese findings can inform and
  help the child-robot interaction community design and develop new adaptiv
 e robots to help assess and rehabilitate linguistic skills and mental well
 -being in children.\n\n\n*Biography:* Micol Spitale is currently a PostDoc
 toral Researcher at the Affective Intelligence & Robotics Laboratory (AFAR
  Lab)\, Department of Computer Science & Technology\, University of Cambri
 dge\, UK under the supervision of Prof. Hatice Gunes. Her research activit
 ies are grounded in the Social Robotics area. She has a background in affe
 ctive computing\, child-robot interaction\, and machine learning applicati
 ons to human behavioural analysis. Her current research focuses on develop
 ing socio-emotionally adaptive robots that can foster wellbeing through co
 aching and psychologically proven interventions. She has been awarded “c
 um laude” a Ph.D. in Information Technology\, Computer Science and Engin
 eering Area at the Politecnico di Milano\, co-funded by IBM Italy and EIT 
 Digital\, in October 2021\, under the supervision of Prof. Franca Garzotto
 . During her Ph.D.\, she spent several months at the University of Souther
 n California (USC) in the Interaction Lab as a visiting Ph.D. student\, wh
 ere she explored the use of robots for eliciting empathy during storytelli
 ng activities under the supervision of the Prof. Maja Matarić.\n\n*Releva
 nt works:*\n\n1. Measuring Mental Wellbeing of Children via Human-Robot In
 teraction: Challenges and Opportunities https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.90485
 \n\n2. Computational Audio Modelling for Robot-Assisted Assessment of Chil
 dren’s Mental Wellbeing https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.89924\n\n3. Affecti
 ve Robotics For Wellbeing: A Scoping Review https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.8
 8410\n\n4. Can Robots Help in the Evaluation of Mental Wellbeing in Childr
 en? An Empirical Study https://doi.org/10.1109/RO-MAN53752.2022.9900843\n\
 n5. Conversational Agents in Therapeutic Interventions for Neurodevelopmen
 tal Disorders: A Survey https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3564269\n\n6. Towar
 d the Introduction of Google Assistant in Therapy for Children with Neurod
 evelopmental Disorders: An Exploratory Study https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.114
 5/3411763.3451666\n\n7. Design Patterns of Technology-based Therapeutic Ac
 tivities for Children with Language Impairments: A Psycholinguistic-Driven
  Approach https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3411763.3451775\n\n8. "Whom w
 ould you like to talk with?" exploring conversational agents for children'
 s linguistic assessment https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3392063.3394421
 \n\nRegister in advance for this seminar: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/
 register/tZcldeuopjoqGNB_vr9wd50x2Q-onIwYa08U\n\nAfter registering\, you w
 ill receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the 
 meeting.
LOCATION:Register on Zoom - link in abstract
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