Storytelling at school with a robot playmate

The paper illustrates an exploratory case study on the use of a toy robot at school to support storytelling in children with cognitive disabilities. Play is a key factor in children’s development, yet disabled children are often prevented from playing because of their physical or cognitive impairments. Robot toys might represent a suitable means of favouring learning through play in inclusive activities at school. The robot used in this study is designed to support play scenarios addressing different educational goals for children with specific needs. This paper describes a storytelling scenario and the experiment conducted with the robot in a primary school over four weeks. The activity involved a group of students with typical development and a child with a learning delay due to a mild cognitive disability. The results of the study show that the performance of the child with learning delay improved in terms of memorization of the story elements, ability to focus attention and reduction of exuberant motility when she played with the robot. The results are supported by qualitative and quantitative evidence, as well as by the comments of the teacher who participated in the study.