Children’s relationships with robots: robot is child’s new friend

Abstract

Abstract-The purpose of this study was to examine how children think about and attribute features of friendship to a robot after a brief interaction with one. Children visiting a science centre located in a major Western Canadian city were randomly selected to participate in an experiment set up at the centre. A total of 184 children ages 5 to 16 years (M = 8.18 years) with an approximate even number of boys and girls participated. Children were interviewed after observing a traditional robot, a small 5 degree of freedom robot arm, perform a block stacking task. Content analysis was used to examine responses to nine open-ended questions. Results indicate that the majority of children were willing to engage in friendship with the robot by showing positive affiliation and social support towards it, as well as sharing activities, and communicating with it.Significant sex differences in how children ascribe characteristics of friendship to a robot were also found. Because of the increase in computer access among youth, studies have investigated the implications of this usage on their physical and psychological well-being [3][4][5]. Results are mixed with studies documenting adverse and positive outcomes, as well as no effects [6][7][8]. While it remains unclear as to how computer use is related to children's social development, research has also to examine how children's interactions with robots affect their development. With robots being built to mimic human expression and behavior it is possible that when children interact with a robot they may develop feelings of friendship towards it. The development of friendships in childhood is crucial to subsequent mental and physical health [9- II. RELATED WORK A. Human-Robot interactionsIn recent years, the course of development of robots has moved away from creating machines to work independently from humans to now creating robots for the purposes of interacting with humans in daily life [12]. In today's society, some robots function as physical aids for elderly people [13], as museum tour guides [14,15], or as peer tutors and educational tools [16,17]. With such a trend toward social robots, questions arise as to the extent of children's knowledge and understanding of humanistic versus robotic characteristics and how this may impact children's social relationships. According to Turkle [18] children who regularly use electronic devices (e.g., computers, video games, electronic toys) are more likely to attribute psychological characteristics to such devices, such as having the ability to talk, sing, or do activities. A recent study by Melson and colleagues [19] examined children's understanding of robotic versus living animals by comparing Sony's AIBO robotic dog to a living dog. The authors found that although more children (aged 7 to 15 years) attributed physical characteristics (i.e., mental states, sociality, and moral standing) to the live dog, the majority of children also ascribed these attributes to the robotic dog. In addition, children were as likely to give co...

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“…This increased level of engagement may be due to the perception of a more rich interaction and more similar to that among humans, in particular friends, as observed above and supported also in [16], [20], despite the fact that no differences in perception of the robot were measured between the conditions. Another way to investigate the children's engagement is to analyze the length of their interactions with the system.…”

The case of classroom robots: teachers’ deliberations on the ethical tensions

“…Previous research has shown that children can perceive robots as friends (Fior et al 2010;Hyun et al 2010;Kanda et al 2004;Tanaka et al 2007), although robots are also seen as a separate ontological entity or "hybrid being" (Eunja et al 2012;Kahn et al 2013). Thus, although robots are not perceived to be completely human (Eunja et al 2012), children nevertheless seem to project their understanding of humans onto robots, allowing friendships to form (Beran and Ramirez-Serrano 2011).…”

Digital Emotion : How Audiences React to Robots on Screen

“…These robots are known as social robots. Social robots hold a variety of different functions, including aiding the elderly, acting as tour guides, and even tutoring [57,58]. The robots can also have emotional roles, acting as companions, allowing people to cope with negative states such as depression, loneliness, and disability [59].…”

“…Research has shown (perhaps via a naïve biology mechanism), that humans attribute verbal communication to robots if they have mouths. According to one study, the attribution of verbal communication is enough for people to start a conversation with the robot [58].…”