Emotional Distraction for Children Anxiety Reduction During Vaccination

Martina Ruocco; Marwa Larafa; Silvia Rossi

Emotional Distraction for Children Anxiety Reduction During Vaccination

Robotics 2019-10-04 v2 Human-Computer Interaction

Authors: Martina Ruocco , Marwa Larafa , Silvia Rossi

Abstract

Social assistive robots are starting to be widely used in pediatric health-care environments with the aim of distracting and entertaining children, and so of reducing a possible state of anxiety. In this paper, we present some initial results of a study (N=69) conducted in a Health-Vaccines Center, where the distraction role of a social robot, which interacts with a child showing an emotional behavior, is compared with the same not showing any emotional social cue. Outcome criteria for the evaluation of the intervention included the parents reported level of anxiety before, during and after the procedure.

Keywords

social assistive robots children anxiety vaccination emotional distraction pediatric healthcare

Cite

@article{arxiv.1909.04961,
  title  = {Emotional Distraction for Children Anxiety Reduction During Vaccination},
  author = {Martina Ruocco and Marwa Larafa and Silvia Rossi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1909.04961},
  year   = {2019}
}

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