Child-Robot Interaction: Designing Robot Mediation to Facilitate Friendship Behaviors (Poster 32)

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Four
  In Poster Session: Division C Section 3b Poster Session

Abstract

This research explored if a social robot would play a role in facilitating the development of friendship between young children while they engage in playful learning. We instantiated four sessions of triadic interaction activities among two children and a robot, where the robot mediated the children’s collaborative interactions. Ten children (aged five to six) enrolled in an after-school program in a rural public school in the U.S. participated in the research. We video-recorded the sessions and later annotated these recordings for analysis. The friendship development between the children in a pair was observed in terms of five behavioral categories (liking, togetherness, parity, agreement, and co-construction). The results showed that robot mediation contributed complementarily to friendship development among the children.

Authors

• Yanghee Kim, Northern Illinois University
  Presenting Author

• Seongmi Lim, Ball State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jaejin Hwang
  Non-Presenting Author

• Moon-Heum Cho, Syracuse University
  Presenting Author

• Sungchul Lee
  Non-Presenting Author