Does it “want” or “was it programmed to...”? Kindergarten children’s explanations of an autonomous robot’s adaptive functioning

Abstract

This study investigates young children's perspectives in explaining a selfregulating mobile robot, as they learn to program its behaviors from rules. We explore their descriptions of a robot in action to determine the nature of their explanatory frameworks: psychological or technological. We have also studied the role of an adult's intervention in their reasoning. The study was conducted individually with six kindergarten children along five sessions that included tasks, ordered by increasing difficulty. We developed and used a robotic control interface. We have found that the children employed two modes of explanation: ''engineering'' mode focused on the technological building blocks which make up the robot's operation; ''bridging'' mode tended to combine and align two explanatory frameworks -technological and psychological. However, this was not consistent across tasks. In the easiest tasks, involving one condition-action rule, most of the children used a technological perspective. When the task became more difficult, most children shifted to a psychological perspective. Further experience in programming was associated with a shift to technological or combined explanatory frameworks. The results are discussed with respect to developmental literature on children's explanatory frameworks, and with regard to educational implications of incorporating such learning environments in early childhood classes.Controlled self-regulated systems pervade our daily environment, embodying central concepts related to systems, adaptation and emergence. Robotic systems, which have been part of educational settings for over two decades, provide opportunities to interact with, and construct controlled adaptive behaviors (Papert 1980

Systematic Review of Research Trends in Robotics Education for Young Children

“…Five studies among the 47 reviewed focused on this aspect of robotics [37,[64][65][66][67] Commonly, the studies investigated how young children developed their conceptions of robots' behaviors and systems of robots.…”

“…Before carrying out the above study, Levy and Mioduser conducted a study which had a similar topic and setting but different findings [67]. This study also captured five-and six-year-old children's different perspectives (the engineering and the psychological perspectives).…”

Making Sense by Building Sense: Kindergarten Children’s Construction and Understanding of Adaptive Robot Behaviors

“…The research literature refers to a number of dyads describing people's stance toward artifacts: animate or human-like intention versus inanimate technological purpose (Ackermann 1991;Turkle 1984;Scaife and van Duuren 1995;Okita and Schwartz 2006;Bernestein and Crowley 2008;Jipson and Gelman 2007); function versus mechanism (Piaget and Inhelder 1972;Granott 1991;Metz 1991;Levy and Mioduser 2008); function versus physical appearance (Kemler Nelson and 11 Swarthmore College Students 1995; Diesendruck et al 2003) and original (designer's) intended function versus current function (Bloom 1996;Matan and Carey 2001;Defeyter 2003).…”

“…In previous papers we have reported on our examination of children's perceptions and explanatory frameworks concerning demonstrated artificial adaptive behaviors of simple robots (Levy and Mioduser 2008;Mioduser et al 2009). Children's explanations of the robots' functioning in diverse scenarios and situations were analyzed, unveiling various layers in their conception of the nature and causes of adaptive behavior in artifacts.…”

“…A brief account of the rationale of the study and the construction environment developed for the young children will be presented in the next section (for a more detailed description see: Levy and Mioduser 2008;Mioduser et al 2009). Specific reference to the tasks, the variables and main themes of the study will be presented in the Method section.…”