Are Chatbots More Effective in Engaging with Autistic Individuals between 13 and 18 years old in Comparison to Therapists conducting Psychotherapy?

Public project summary

This research project is going to determine the effectiveness of social chatbot. Autistic users are individuals that have challenges in communicating verbally or socially with surrounding people. This is because autistic individuals tend to talk about particular topics that only they are interested in, which is sometimes difficult for others to keep up. However, a chatbot can more likely continue with the conversation, even when the autistic individual keeps on talking about the same topic. The hypothesis is that the autistic user will converse more consistently with the robot in comparison to a human therapist.