Children with autism show atypical neural activity when interacting with a humanoid robot, study finds

A recent study using functional near-infrared spectroscopy compared neural responses of preschool children with and without autism to videos presenting a human and a humanoid robot. Neural activity of children with autism differed in the situation when they were interacting with a video containing a humanoid robot compared to interacting with a video containing a human being. Neural activity of children without autism, in contrast, was similar in these two situations. The study was published in the International Journal of Psychophysiology. Autism or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is one of th...