Creativity Encounters Between Children and Robots

Abstract

Creativity is an intrinsic human ability with multiple benefits across the lifespan. Despite its importance, societies not always are well equipped with contexts for creativity stimulation; as a consequence, a major decline in creative abilities occurs at the age of 7 years old. We investigated the effectiveness of using a robotic system named YOLO as an intervention tool to stimulate creativity in children. During the intervention, children used YOLO as a character for their stories and through the interaction with the robot, creative abilities were stimulated. Our study (n = 62) included 3 experimental conditions: i) YOLO displayed behaviors based on creativity techniques; ii) YOLO displayed behaviors based on creativity techniques plus social behaviors; iii) YOLO was turned off, not displaying any behaviors. We measured children's creative abilities at pre-and post-testing and their creative process through behavior analysis. Results showed that the interaction with YOLO contributed to higher creativity levels in children, specifically contributing to the generation of more original ideas during story creation. This study shows the potential of using social robots as tools to empower intrinsic human abilities, such as the ability to be creative.

Brainstorming With a Social Robot Facilitator: Better Than Human Facilitation Due to Reduced Evaluation Apprehension?

“…The results showed no evidence that brainstorming with a teleoperated social robot facilitator, compared to brainstorming with a human facilitator, influenced productivity. Where previous studies found positive effects of social robot facilitation compared to other technologies, such as an iPad application (Ali et al, 2021), PowerPoint presentation (Kahn et al, 2016) or a social robot that was turned off (Alves-Oliveira et al, 2020), the present study thus adds no evidence indicative that robot facilitation led people to generate more ideas than human facilitation. However, participants also did not generate fewer ideas with a robot than with a human facilitator.…”

“…Emerging technologies, such as co-creative agents and specifically social robots, are therefore increasingly looked at as an alternative to professional human facilitation (Davis et al, 2015;Frich et al, 2019). This research program is further emboldened by experimental findings that suggest that generating ideas with a social robot facilitator can enhance productivity and creativity, when compared to facilitation delivered via other technologies (Kahn et al, 2016;Ali et al, 2021;Alves-Oliveira et al, 2020). Although social robots are generally defined as being (semi) autonomous (Bartneck and Forlizzi 2004), in the present work we have used teleoperation to explore the potential future in which social robots would be able to autonomously facilitate brainstorming.…”

“…Recent findings support that doing brainstorming and other creative work with a social robot facilitator might be advantageous over using other technologies. Alves-Oliveira et al (2020), for example, showed that using the social robot YOLO as a character in a storytelling task, led children to generate more original ideas when YOLO actively facilitated creative thinking than when YOLO was turned off. In addition, Ali et al (2021) showed that facilitating figural creativity by engaging and managing turntaking in a drawing completion task by means of the social robot Jibo, increased productivity, flexibility, and originality scores of children's drawings, compared to facilitation by an iPad application.…”

Children as Robot Designers

“…Results showed that when children played with the full version of the robot, their stories were more original. More details about this study can be found in Alves-Oliveira et al (2020) [86]. Note that the paper [86] described the experimental study of children using the robot to create stories, whereas the work presented in this paper describes the design study of the conception, fabrication, and development of the robot.…”

Engaging English Language Learners as Cultural Informants in the Design of a Social Robot for Education

“…For the past three decades, educators have embraced a culturally responsive pedagogy that would enhance students' academic growth and improve their psycho-social wellbeing [8,56,57]. The Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence has established four elements of culturally responsive instruction: (1) connecting school to students' lives (2) engaging students in instructional conversation, (3) clear language and literacy instructional goals, and (4) Learning through joint productive activity with teachers and peers.…”