Can We Keep Him Forever? Teens’ Engagement and Desire for Emotional Connection with a Social Robot

As social robots are increasingly introduced into health interventions, one potential area where they might prove valuable is in supporting people’s psychological health through conversation. Given the importance of self-disclosure for psychological health, this study assessed the viability of using social robots for eliciting rich disclosures that identify needs and emotional states in human interaction partners. Three within-subject experiments were conducted with participants interacting with another person, a humanoid social robot, and a disembodied conversational agent (voice assistant). We performed a number of objective evaluations of disclosures to these three agents via speech content and voice analyses and also probed participants’ subjective evaluations of their disclosures to three agents. Our findings suggest that participants overall disclose more to humans than artificial agents, that agents’ embodiment influences disclosure quantity and quality, and that people are generally aware of differences in their personal disclosures to three agents studied here. Together, the findings set the stage for further investigation into the psychological underpinnings of self-disclosures to artificial agents and their potential role in eliciting disclosures as part of mental and physical health interventions.

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“…The agents' treatments elicited statistically significant large differences in people's perceptions of the agents sense of agency, ( ) F 1. 61 .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…ref. [20,[54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69]); however, evidence is limited regarding how people's subjective perceptions of self-disclosure align with objective measures of self-disclosure. Here we evaluate both people's perceptions and their actual disclosures across three experiments.…”

Section: Subjective and Objective Disclosurementioning

confidence: 99%

Tell me more! Assessing interactions with social robots from speech

Laban

George

Morrison

et al. 2020

Paladyn, Journal of Behavioral Robotics

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“…These advances in social robots resulted in their slow introduction into the educational system (Belpaeme et al, 2018a ; Kory-Westlund and Breazeal, 2019 ) and into homes (Scassellati et al, 2018 ). Many studies have focused on young children, from preschoolers (Kory and Breazeal, 2014 ), through elementary school (Leite et al, 2015 ), and adolescents (Björling et al, 2019 ), with special interest in children with Autism (Scassellati et al, 2018 ). In recent years, several applications of social robots in higher education have started to emerge (Brown and Howard, 2014 ; Edwards et al, 2016 ; Deublein et al, 2018 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Robot-Supported Collaborative Learning (RSCL): Social Robots as Teaching Assistants for Higher Education Small Group Facilitation

2020

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Acknowledging the benefits of active learning and the importance of collaboration skills, the higher education system has started to transform toward utilization of group activities into lecture hall culture. In this study, a novel interaction has been introduced, wherein a social robot facilitated a small collaborative group activity of students in higher education. Thirty-six students completed a 3 h activity that covered the main content of a course in Human Computer Interaction. In this within-subject study, the students worked in groups of four on three activities, moving between three conditions: instructor facilitation of several groups using pen and paper for the activity; tablets facilitation, also used for the activity; and robot facilitation, using tablets for the activity. The robot facilitated the activity by introducing the different tasks, ensuring proper time management, and encouraging discussion among the students. This study examined the effects of facilitation type on attitudes toward the activity facilitation, the group activity, and the robot, using quantitative, and qualitative measures. Overall students perceived the robot positively, as friendly and responsive, even though the robot did not directly respond to the students' verbal communications. While most survey items did not convey significant differences between the robot, tablet, or instructor, we found significant correlations between perceptions of the robot, and attitudes toward the activity facilitation, and the group activity. Qualitative data revealed the drawbacks and benefits of the robot, as well as its relative perceived advantages over a human facilitator, such as better time management, objectivity, and efficiency. These results suggest that the robot's complementary characteristics enable a higher quality learning environment, that corresponds with students' requirements and that a Robot Supportive Collaborative Learning (RSCL) is a promising novel paradigm for higher education.

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“…Moreover, using social robots as research tools, we can learn more about ourselves as humans through a social-cognitive lens [33,55]. Social concepts like trust (e.g., [56,57,58,59]), attachment (e.g., [60]), empathy (e.g., [61]), acceptance (e.g., [57,62]), and disclosure (e.g., [42,63,64,65,66,67]) with social robots are being studied. In addition, the use of social robots is growing in complex social contexts such as those found in education (e.g., [58,59,68]), service (e.g., [69]), and care sectors (e.g., [70,71,72]).…”

Section: Interdisciplinary Tensionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Makes a Robot Social? A Review of Social Robots from Fiction to a Home or Hospital Near You

Henschel¹,

Laban²,

Cross³

2020

Preprint

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Purpose of review: We provide an outlook on the definitions, laboratory research, and applications of social robots, with an aim to understand what makes a robot social – in the eyes of science and the general public. Recent Findings: Social robots demonstrate their potential when deployed within contexts appropriate to their form and functions. Some examples include companions for the elderly and cognitively impaired individuals, robots within educational settings, and as tools to support cognitive and behavioural change interventions. Summary: Science fiction has inspired us to conceive of a future with autonomous robots helping with every aspect of our daily lives, although the robots we are familiar with through film and literature remain a vision of the distant future. While there are still miles to go before robots become a regular feature within our social spaces, rapid progress in social robotics research, aided by the social sciences, is helping to move us closer to this reality.

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Can We Keep Him Forever? Teens’ Engagement and Desire for Emotional Connection with a Social Robot

Cited by 46 publications

References 80 publications

Tell me more! Assessing interactions with social robots from speech

Tell me more! Assessing interactions with social robots from speech

Robot-Supported Collaborative Learning (RSCL): Social Robots as Teaching Assistants for Higher Education Small Group Facilitation

What Makes a Robot Social? A Review of Social Robots from Fiction to a Home or Hospital Near You

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