An autistic PhD candidate in computer science, Naba Rizvi is the lead author of published between 2016 and 2022 that focused on robots’ interactions with autistic people. She and her colleagues found that almost all of the research excludes the perspectives of the autistic subjects, pathologizes them by using an outdated understanding of the neurotype, and contains little, if any, evidence that therapies delivered by robots are effective. 

More than 93% of the studies start with the now-controversial stance that autism is a condition that can and should be cured. Nearly all test the use of robots to diagnose the condition or to teach autistic children to interact in ways that make them seem more neurotypical, such as making eye contact.

While most research on human-robot interaction starts by asking the subjects what their needs are, nearly 90% of the researchers in Rizvi’s sample did not ask autistic people whether they want the technology. Fewer than 3% included autistic people in framing the theory being investigated, and just 5% incorporated their perspectives in designing research. 

“Even clinicians are not convinced of their effectiveness, and minimal progress has been made in making such robots clinically useful,” Rizvi writes. “In fact, research even suggests that this use of robots may be counterproductive and negatively impact the skills they are designed to hone in autistic end-users.”

Proponents reason that robots can not only deliver behavior therapy more cheaply but will appeal more to children than human therapists. Investors forecast the technology could become the centerpiece of a market that may soon be worth . Not yet common in special education classrooms, robots programmed to intervene with autistic children are being marketed to schools and even families.

Some of the early research the robotics industry has recently relied on in designing its experiments described autistic children as less human than chimpanzees, Rizvi adds: “These systems promote the idea that autistic people are ‘deficient’ in their humanness, and that robots can teach them how to be more human-like. This echoes foundational work that has questioned the humanity of autistic people, and proposed non-human entities such as animals may be more human than them.” 

Most of the research the team reviewed was published in robotics journals, not autism reviews. Seventy-six of the studies used anthropomorphic or humanoid robots to teach social skills, while 15 relied on devices designed to look like animals. One used a robot to diagnose “abnormal” social interactions.

Researchers leaned on harmful tropes that describe autistic people as robot-like — and robots as intrinsically autistic. Many of the papers reviewed also accept an old and controversial premise that autistic people are not motivated to interact socially with others. Less than 10% included representative samples of girls, whose autistic “behaviors” are more likely to show up as depression and other mental health conditions. 

The report comes as a rift is widening between proponents of using behavioral therapy and autistic adults who say the intervention, commonly called applied behavior analysis, is inhumane. A growing body of research suggests that efforts to train autistic children to act and appear more like their neurotypical, or non-autistic, peers are ineffective and often traumatizing. 

In applied behavior analysis, a therapist uses positive and negative reinforcement to attempt to “extinguish” mannerisms perceived as undesirable and to replace them with behaviors considered “normal.” Therapists work one-on-one with a child, often 10 to40 hours a week. It is repetitive and expensive.

Many autistic adults who have undergone the therapy note that some of the mannerisms it attempts to eliminate, such as hand-flapping or rocking, are harmless ways to compensate for overstimulation or to express positive emotions. Nonetheless, the therapy is widely considered the “gold standard” of autism interventions. 

Rizvi says she’s dismayed but not surprised by the push to develop automated therapists. The use of robotics in medicine is exploding, and almost all of the researchers in her sample framed their work using what advocates call the “medical model” of disability. Historically, disabilities have been seen as medically diagnosable deficits to be treated or cured. 

Over the past couple of decades, however, people with disabilities have increasingly pushed for the adoption of a “social model,” which holds that a lack of inclusion in all realms of public life is the central issue. Autistic adults have advocated for better representation in research, so that more studies are geared toward making education, employment, housing and other sectors of society more accommodating.

Just 6% of the papers Rizvi and her colleagues reviewed start from a social model. This is problematic, they say, because many autistic people have needs that can be addressed by improved technology. Non-verbal students, for example, benefit from evolving “augmentative and assistive communication” — devices families often struggle to get schools to provide. 

Rizvi’s main research focus is on the development of ethical artificial intelligence. Because the datasets AI is “trained” on , so are the resulting algorithms, she explains. Research has shown, for example, that resumes that mention jobs in disability agencies or support capacities are automatically scored lower by AI than those that don’t.

Another example is AI-enabled online content moderation. Social media posts and comments that mention disability-related topics are often rejected as toxic, Rizvi says. 

“When it comes to content moderation the data sets don’t always represent the perspectives of the communities,” she says. “And they do this thing where, say, if you have three people trying to agree on whether or not a sentence is ableist, the automatic assumption is that the majority vote is the right one.”

“Are Robots Ready to Deliver Autism Inclusion? A Critical Review” was presented at a recent . The presentation includes suggestions for ensuring research is inclusive and avoids harmful stereotypes and historical misrepresentations, which are on Rizvi’s own website. 

Teachers say Struggly, available for at-home or classroom use, is a game changer for K-8 students discouraged by math or having a hard time with traditional tasks because of language barriers or learning disabilities. In game-like tasks aligned with common core standards, students manipulate shapes, animals, and algebraic formulas to build foundational understanding. 

The platform’s potential reach is hard to overstate as educators urgently search for ways to address the : On average, only one in four kids are proficient in 8th grade math; the number hovering between 9-14% for Black, Native and Latino children.

In approximately 340 schools across 28 states and 21 countries, Struggly has become the go-to supplemental learning platform for some educators whose students had difficulty socializing or collaborating after missing in-person learning in early childhood during the pandemic. School sites range from gifted programs and large to smaller private schools serving students with special needs and juvenile detention centers. 

, “put the student in the driver’s seat, don’t make them reliant on any sort of literacy, but also don’t make them rely on an adult to tell them what to do,” said Tanya LaMar, CEO and cofounder, adding its unusual design was intended to “allow all students to have access to math regardless of language, socioeconomic status or any kind of diversity markers.” 

Many educators have found the platform via conferences across the U.S. At SXSW EDU, the platform won this year’s Community Choice Award for the , celebrating digital innovations helping to bridge learning gaps. 

Levels designed to become more challenging as students go on can be solved multiple ways, encouraging learners to talk to each other about their strategies and challenge common misconceptions that math is more about memorization than reason or logic. The video game-like design, with no time restrictions, also keeps students calm and engaged longer, teachers say. 

After using Struggly for one month – 20 minutes, three times a week – 63% improved scores on state tests and 68% felt more engaged in their math classes, according to independent research from WestEd. Teachers have also noticed fewer outbursts and negative self talk, more confidence and less .

One district survey revealed students were more likely to agree with statements like, “if I work really hard, I can become very good at math” and to disagree with “people can’t change how good they are at math.”

Struggly was originally imagined by designer Alina Schlaier, whose daughter came home from first grade one day saying, “I hate math.” Schlaier found Stanford math expert Jo Boaler’s resources online, but knowing that it wasn’t sustainable for her to prep each lesson for her daughter, the designer reached out to Boaler with the idea of forming a company that would blend their skills. 

Boaler’s former PhD student Tanya LaMar joined the effort, bringing an educator’s lens to its creation, once a Los Angeles Unified teacher. There, she had faced compounding challenges: teaching math while teaching kids to see math beyond the narrow way they’d been taught it must look – facts, procedures to be memorized.

“Meanwhile, neuroscience research tells us that there’s no such thing as math brain … I felt like I was up against a lot trying to convince my students they could be math people, when struggling in math is seen as a sign that something’s wrong,” LaMar said. “So Struggly is about supporting students to embrace struggle as an integral part of the learning process.”

Such a shift has been transformational for educators like Gregg Bonti, a math group teacher at Mary McDowell, a quaker school in Brooklyn serving students with language-based learning disabilities.

Typically, his 4th and 5th graders arrive with some “resistance to learning and school.” At the start of the year, as soon as something felt challenging, many would shut down or push back on tasks, or start to talk to themselves disparagingly. Many also struggle with impulse control, but the games’ design has helped them “slow down” and “strategize.”

“It’s really rare and challenging for us to find websites that meet students where they’re at with their language skills,” Bonti said. Removing language from the tasks and letting them dive in has “neutralized” the playing field for his students, who come to class with a range of reading abilities. 

Since introducing Struggly in December, he’s finding students are more eager to persevere in math tasks and ask each other questions like “what if we tried this?” It’s also helped their teachers distinguish between their conceptual misunderstandings of math versus difficulties with language. 

Across the country in California’s central valley, one rural educator has been finding similar impacts. 

At Semitropic, a small school of predominantly Latino, multilingual students living in poverty, 3rd grade teacher Jennifer Fields was looking for platforms that would encourage and engage – they felt burnt out by Prodigy, but she needed something standards based. 

The first day she introduced it, one student went home and played on their own for three hours. It’s become so desired she can use it as a motivation for them to finish their other in-class work. 

Conceptually, it’s helped them grasp onto geometry concepts like manipulation and transformation easier than in traditional workbooks. They’re learning how to better communicate math concepts verbally, something she worried about seeing the difference in this group of children who had the equivalent of Zoom kindergarten. 

“That in itself has been my biggest success for the year is the fact that now they will work in cooperative groups with each other … they’re being more verbal and realizing it’s OK to talk about, ‘oh man, I didn’t get it.’ They go find that person and they immediately go to try to help them out instead of just having them just sit there, freak out, suffer and get mad,” she said.  

And because the platform is so visually and sonically engaging, teachers are finding it’s helping students learn independence and staying on-task. That has enabled Shelly Anderson, a 4th grade teacher in Salt Lake City, to be able to conduct small groups with students who need more specialized support; the others are able to work on Struggly independently, helping each other, as she provides more individualized attention. 

One student, who had a tendency to swear and give up, sometimes leaving the classroom, is now self-regulating his anger and frustration better. He no longer says he “can’t do this” or that “I’m dumb at math,” even during usual instruction.

“It’s just refreshing to have something for the kids to do where they can untether from the teacher more,” Anderson said. “They can start to get some of their own confidence and build their identity as math learners rather than just thinking, ‘well, either I have a math brain or I don’t.’ Everybody has the ability to seek out patterns, look at problems and look at logic.”

Disclosure: The Walton Family Foundation sponsored SXSW EDU’s Launch Startup competition and provides support to The 74.