Trouble and Repair in Child–Robot Interaction: A Study of Complex Interactions With a Robot Tutee in a Primary School Classroom

Abstract

Today, robots are studied and expected to be used in a range of social roles within classrooms. Yet, due to a number of limitations in social robots, robot interactions should be expected to occasionally suffer from troublesome situations and breakdowns. In this paper, we explore this issue by studying how children handle interaction trouble with a robot tutee in a classroom setting. The findings have implications not only for the design of robots, but also for evaluating their benefit in, and for, educational contexts. In this study, we conducted video analysis of children's group interactions with a robot tutee in a classroom setting, in order to explore the nature of these troubles in the wild. Within each group, children took turns acting as the primary interaction partner for the robot within the context of a mathematics game. Specifically, we examined what types of situations constitute trouble in these child-robot interactions, the strategies that individual children employ to cope with this trouble, as well as the strategies employed by other actors witnessing the trouble. By means of Interaction Analysis, we studied the video recordings of nine group interaction sessions (n = 33 children) in primary school grades 2 and 4. We found that sources of trouble related to the robot's social norm violations, which could be either active or passive. In terms of strategies, the children either persisted in their attempts at interacting with the robot by adapting their behavior in different ways, distanced themselves from the robot, or sought the help of present adults (i.e., a researcher in a teacher role, or an experimenter) or their peers (i.e., the child's classmates in each group). In terms of the witnessing actors, they addressed the trouble by providing guidance directed at the child interacting with the robot, or by intervening in the interaction. These findings reveal the unspoken rules by which children orient toward social robots, the complexities of child-robot interaction in the wild, and provide insights on children's perspectives and expectations of social robots in classroom contexts.

Comparing a Robot Tutee to a Human Tutee in a Learning-By-Teaching Scenario with Children

“…Similar responses were seen for their willingness to hang out with the RT without playing the game. However, they were slightly less certain towards playing the math game with the RT and their classmates as they had done in our previous study (Serholt et al, 2020). A majority were disinterested in playing the math game alone, suggesting a strong motivational contribution of the interaction with a tutee during the game.…”

“…In a similar vein, children’s rapport towards a robot tutee has been shown to fluctuate both between children and over time ( Tian et al, 2020 ), and, e.g., children’s pre-existing comfort levels with robots seem to influence their acceptance of a robot tutee’s social behavior ( Lubold et al, 2019 ). In one of our previous studies, we found that children employ a range of strategies to repair interactions with a robot tutee behaving in socially inappropriate ways, ranging from trying to understand and adapt to the robot, to establishing a social distance to it ( Serholt et al, 2020 ). Further, Lemaignan et al (2016) observed promising effects pertaining to engagement and learning gains when using a handwriting tutee robot for children’s long-term occupational therapy; however, they also emphasized the need for further studies on the ethical implications surrounding the child–robot relationship that could develop, i.e., the potential psychological implications for children who commit to helping a robot.…”

Introduction: special issue—critical robotics research

“…Our own work has also developed in these directions and includes interrogations of ethical issues surrounding educational robots (Serholt et al 2017;Toft Norgaard et al 2018), scrutinizing problematic aspects of interactions between humans and robots (Serholt 2018;Serholt et al 2020), focusing on understanding challenging experiences and practices of existing robot technology in society, such as professional use of drones (Ljungblad et al 2021), and use of robotic toys in families (Fernaeus et al 2010). We have previously also done studies with artists to understand how artistic projects may question myths about robots (Jacobsson et al 2013), and early work to address the need to ground ethical considerations in empirical studies and real practices rather than fictive use situations (Ljungblad et al 2011;Nylander et al 2012).…”

Does Inquiry-based Education Using Robots Have an Effect on Learners’ Inquiry Skills, Subject Knowledge and Skills, and Motivation?

“…Robots have been applied in education since the 1980s starting from the construction of objects [1] and the use of social robots [2], [3] to a large variety of uses [4]. The initial idea of using robots in science education mainly originated from Seymour Papert who defined constructionism as enabling a person to learn with objects [5].…”