The emotional skills protocol aims to achieve the following objectives:

• Acquisition of appropriate emotional skills and understanding of emotions;
• Construction of functional thoughts related to emotions;
• Enhancement of interpersonal and social skills. It is aimed at a sample of children diagnosed with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD) between the ages of 5 and 10. The experimental group will carry out training through the use of social robots. The robot provides instructions and if the child requests it, it gives prompts.

The emotional skills protocol aims to achieve the following objectives:

• Acquisition of appropriate emotional skills and understanding of emotions; Construction of functional thoughts related to emotions;
• Enhancement of interpersonal and social skills. It is aimed at a sample of children diagnosed with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD) between the ages of 5 and 10. Control group which will be conducted through traditional therapy. The therapist provides instructions, and if the child has difficulty responding, he gives prompts.

The protocol is divided into 4 stages:

1. EMOTION RECOGNITION - "Mime Game": activity aimed at acquiring the ability to label basic emotions.
2. EMOTION/SITUATION ASSOCIATION - "How do I feel when...?" game: presentation of social situations to acquire the ability to attribute the emotion associated with the situation presented.
3. DIFFERENTIATION BETWEEN EMOTIONS AND THOUGHTS - "Think-Feel Game": activity aimed at differentiating thoughts from emotions and acquiring the skill of linking a thought to an emotion.
4. LEARNING A REPERTOIRE OF USEFUL THOUGHTS: acquisition of useful thoughts related to certain emotional situations. The robot provides instructions and if the child requests it, it elects prompts.

The Test of Emotional Vocabulary contains an initial board, with which the child is introduced to the two protagonists of the subsequent stories, a boy and a girl; there is then a pretest board and 14 storyboards. For each of them, the examiner reads the short story to the child and then asks the child to choose, from two alternative emotional words, the one that best expresses what the protagonist of the story is feeling. In the first part, the child's understanding of emotional vocabulary referring to six basic emotions plus one complex emotion (joy, happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust and shame) is assessed; in the second part, the emotional terms all refer to complex emotions (guilt, envy, jealousy, contempt, hate, longing and pride).

The Test of emotion comprehension (TEC) is an instrument to assess a child's understanding of emotions, in its various aspects, that is, the nature, causes, and ways of controlling and regulating emotions. It is used for children aged 3-4 to 10-11 years. It is administered by telling a story in pictures, the child responds by indicating and finally, it takes about 15-20 minutes.