Social robotics and Autism Spectrum DisorderA Bibliometric review

Resumen

This study deepens into the field of science that combines social robotics and learning difficulties, specifically autism spectrum disorders, aimed to know what has been written in the scientific community about autism and social robotics. To do so, the most relevant database for research in the socio-educational field was chosen; Education Resources Information Center (ERIC from now on). ERIC is commonly accepted as the biggest and most relevant data-base in the field of the educational sciences, it belongs to the Proquest group. The key words chosen were autism and robotics, but using the thesaurus the data-base provides us with, we could make a wider research using the next key words; On the one hand, autism, asperger syndrome and behavior disorders. On the other hand, robotics, cybernetics and electronics. This research gave us 34 studies. Date filters were not included in our search for two reasons mainly: firstly, we did not want to achieve so few results, since there is not much that has been written on this subject. Secondly, we wanted to know when it started to be written on the subject, and which were the most productive dates. Taking into account that our focus and interest is on primary education and secondary education, all other educational levels were excluded, leaving us with the final figure of 31 studies. As seen on figure 1, the result of the first search has been 34 studies. In order to refine this search a new filter was added; the studies were to be carried out in primary and secondary education. This way we make sure that the results we find belong to our target age. Finally educational level of the studies was filtered. Taking into account that our focus and interest is set on primary education and secondary education, all other educational levels were excluded, leaving us with the final figure of 31 studies.