System Fault Tolerancing and Self-Reported Usability of a Closed-Loop Robotic System for Reading Comprehension Skill Development in Children Who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

Children who are deaf or hard of hearing often suffer from low literacy and reading comprehension rates [1]. Over the past 50 years, research had concluded that literacy rates for these children rarely pass a fourth-grade level [2]. However, little research has been done regarding interventions for reading comprehension skill development [3]. Our long-term study seeks to incorporate social robotics and reading comprehension development to provide an option for in-home and in-school reading focused interventions. In the current study, we present an initial validation of a closed-loop social robotic system for reading comprehension testing. Results suggest our robot-based system is capable of recording and interpreting human responses and can provide contingent feedback to answers to evidence-derived reading comprehension questions. The system demonstrated few errors and was found to be acceptable, falling within the 3^rd quartile range when compared to other studies, according to the System Usability Scale (SUS) [4]. These results demonstrate the potential utility of the system with the target population; additional testing with age-matched participants is needed to verify the relationship between errors and SUS scores.

Keywords—Social Robotics, Reading Comprehension, System Usability, Deaf or Hard of Hearing