Ten children with ASD, aged between 8 and 13 years and with verbal IQs above 75, will be included in the trial following an assessment of their socio-pragmatic skills. They will be randomly assigned to either the control group or the experimental group. Participants in the experimental group will undergo an intervention aimed at developing and/or enhancing socio-pragmatic skills through the mediation of a social robot.

Ten children with ASD, aged between 8 and 13 years and with verbal IQs above 75, will be included in the trial following an assessment of their socio-pragmatic skills. Children in the control group will follow the same protocol of Experimental Group delivered through a therapist-led group format.

The training sessions were carried out following a strict order. The first phase was dedicated to improving group social skills. The beginning of the session was dedicated to greetings between participants and questions of social interest. During the second phase, videos were shown and participants answered targeted questions asked by the Nao Robot to understand if the child had correctly interpreted the general meaning of the story and to determine the degree of awareness that the expression should be understood in a non-literal sense. In the third phase, a role play was performed among the participants, which re-enacted the situations seen in the videos, involving all the members of the group in turn. During the last phase, participants were asked to share experiences in their lives in which they had used or could have used the pragmatic skill just analyzed. The protocol included 15 phases over 31 sessions, each lasting 45 minutes, twice a week.

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children 4° edizione (WISC-IV) is a clinical tool for assessing the cognitive abilities of children and young people between the ages of 6 years and 16 years and 11 months.

The APL MEDEA is a standardized assessment tool specifically designed to evaluate socio-pragmatic skills in individuals aged 5 to 14 years. This test measures various aspects of pragmatic language skills that are essential for effective communication within social contexts.

The main objective of the APL MEDEA is to assess pragmatic language skills employed during everyday interactions, including the understanding and appropriate use of language in various social situations, recognition of social cues, and effective conversational strategies. The total score ranges from 0 to 68.