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...