The computer-assisted interview In My Shoes can benefit shy preschool children's communication

Abstract

Interviewing children is a cognitively, socially, and emotionally challenging situation, especially for young and shy children. Thus, finding methods that aid rapport and increase these children's communication is important. The present study investigated whether children's verbal and non-verbal communicative behavior developed differently during the rapport phase, depending on whether children were situationally shy or not, and whether the interview was conducted using the computer-assisted interview In My Shoes (IMS) or a Standard verbal interview. The sample consisted of 60 children aged 4 to 5-years-old. The results showed that for the shy children in the IMS group their talkativeness increased and their answer latency decreased including the amount of encouragement the child needed to talk, while no changes were observed for the shy children in the Standard verbal interview group. There were no significant differences in the non-verbal behavior for the shy children regardless of the interview method used. For the non-shy children, overall, the interview method did not affect either the verbal or the non-verbal outcomes. Our findings indicate that IMS can be a useful tool during the rapport-building phase with shy children as it helps these children to improve their verbal communication.

A Review on a Computational Model of Shyness for Artificial Agents in the Malaysian Learning Domain

“…Artificial agents possess social features and physical representations suitable for the teaching and learning domain, which elasticities rich benefits particularly in engaging with students. These agents can recognize, adapt and response to the verbal and non-verbal behaviours of learners especially shy students who may be comfortable interacting with agents compared to a human instructor (Barrow et al, 2012;Grasso et al, 2013;Ahmad et al, 2017;Fängström et al, 2017). This aspect further supports the objective of this research which is in-line with the aim of the Malaysian Ministry of Education (MOE) to build an education system which is less focused on traditional academic pathways.…”

“…Studies have proven that children's engagement can be sustained and 'silence' can be manipulated through implementing a robotic system that can adapt and response according to user states (Ahmad et al, 2017;Fängström et al, 2017). The use of agents has shown to be an efficient methodology to reach to reserved students in classrooms (Ahmad et al, 2017;Fängström et al, 2017).…”

“…Studies have proven that children's engagement can be sustained and 'silence' can be manipulated through implementing a robotic system that can adapt and response according to user states (Ahmad et al, 2017;Fängström et al, 2017). The use of agents has shown to be an efficient methodology to reach to reserved students in classrooms (Ahmad et al, 2017;Fängström et al, 2017). Therefore, integrating a shyness model into an interactive synthetic agent in the learning domain in a typical Malaysian academic setting may help overcome some of the hurdles these students face.…”

“…Technology is now a well-accepted and integral part of education in schools and universities which supports pedagogical values over conventional means of teaching by providing efficient, engaging learning experience for students. The integration of technology in education has been diverse in nature ranging from tablets, smart artifacts, mobile phones, novel web based platforms and artificial agents (Ahmad et al, 2017;Fängström et al, 2017).…”

Can rapport building strategies, age, and question type influence preschoolers’ disclosures of adult wrongdoing?

“…Future research would benefit from including a control condition without rapport building, to compare with different methods of rapport‐building. Furthermore, future studies could also consider examining the effectiveness of different rapport building strategies in relation to other child specific factors such as level of shyness (Fängström, Salari, Eriksson & Sarkadi, ) and whether children display early signs of reluctance (Hershkowitz et al ., ).…”