Unusual Artifacts: How Children From STEM and non-STEM Families Think About and Play With Robots

• In Event: Children's and Adolescents' Technology Use to Enhance Cognitive and Educational Outcomes

Abstract

While robots are artifacts, people often perceive some animacy in robots. Previous research shows that some children perceive robots as a new ontological category, with traits of living and nonliving things (Jipson & Gelman, 2007). Our study examines social contexts where children develop ideas about robots, asking whether children think about and interact with robots differently depending on their parents’ occupation - comparing STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math) versus non-STEM occupations.

We invited 72 parents and their 3- to 6-year-old child (M=4.95, 35 girls) to play with a robot called “Skye,” answer a parent survey, and a child interview about animacy of the robot Skye, a plant, a dog, a river, and a washing machine. Participants were recruited at Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose. Parents' self-reports of their occupations were coded as STEM or non-STEM. Our research question asks whether children interact differently with Skye depending on: (a)children’s age, (b)parents’ (STEM, non-STEM) occupation, and (c)children’s animacy judgments about robots.

In the play session, parent-child dyads helped Skye navigate to corners of a colorful floor mat, with instructions that Skye may follow when they clap or speak. Parents’ and children’s behaviors and talk were coded in four mutually exclusive categories: “Simple Commands” (clapping and simple words to guide Skye), “Complex Commands” (full sentence instructions or gestures to guide Skye), “Communicate about Skye” (talking to one another about Skye’s behaviors), and “Observe Skye” (observing but not communicating with or about Skye).

Children’s age and parents’ occupation interacted in predicting the proportion of time spent in different types of interaction with Skye. To illustrate, Figure 1 shows means of children’s Simple and Complex commands by age and STEM occupation. For parents with STEM occupations, we found that as children got older, they spent more time giving Complex Commands. For parents with non-STEM occupations, we found that as children got older, they spent more time giving Simple Commands and Communicating about Skye, and less time Observing Skye.
Children’s animacy judgments also interacted with parents' occupation in predicting interactions with Skye. For children of STEM parents, perceived animacy scores were negatively correlated with time Observing Skye. For children of non-STEM parents, animacy scores were not related to children’s behaviors.

These results show that parents’ STEM versus non-STEM occupation, children’s age, and children’s perceived animacy of Skye all contributed to predicting children’s behavior with a robot. In particular, children of parents with STEM occupations showed distinctive patterns linking their behavior with Skye to their age and animacy judgments. Children with STEM parents increased their Complex Commands to Skye as they got older, suggesting that they increased expectations that robots can respond to sophisticated language and gesture. Further, children of STEM parents with lower perceived animacy scores spent more time Observing Skye without interacting. As technology advances and becomes more prevalent in our lives it is important to understand children’s flexible understanding of ontological categories and how family background and interactions with their parents contribute to how they make sense of robots.

Authors

• Sam R McHugh, University of California - Santa Cruz
  Presenting Author

• Maureen A Callanan, University of California - Santa Cruz
  Non-Presenting Author

• Leila Takayama, University of California, Santa Cruz
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kevin Weatherwax, University of California, Santa Cruz
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jennifer Jipson, California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo
  Non-Presenting Author