A study on the potential roles of a robot peer in socio-emotional development of children. (2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Cho, Hye-Kyung; Oh, Junseok; Lee, KyungOk
• Is Part Of: International journal of computational vision and robotics. Volume 7:Number 3(2017)
• Page Start: 335
• Page End: 343
• Publication Date: 2017
• Subjects: emotional intelligence -- r-learning -- robot mediation -- educational robots -- robot peers -- socio-emotional development -- children -- child development -- robot mediated learning -- affective feedback -- teacher intervention -- sociable mode -- child engagement -- empathy; Computer vision -- Periodicals; Robotics -- Periodicals; Artificial intelligence -- Periodicals; 006.3705
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1752-9131

Abstract

This paper presents a robot mediated learning environment for children where various educational activities regarding emotional intelligence can be provided. The environment consists of a socially assistive robot, an auxiliary display, and a mobile device for teacher's intervention. The robot and the display are employed as mediators to give adequate affective feedbacks to children, which might not be possible among very young peers. The intervention device for teachers is employed to coach the robot on giving appropriate affective feedbacks according to the reaction of children. We intended to increase children's engagement on the activities and enhance their empathy while interacting with a friend-like robot than they do with an adult teacher. To verify the feasibility of the proposed design, we implemented an activity on emotional regulation strategies and performed a brief user study. The results clearly show that the participants prefer sociable mode of robot operation to still mode operation.