Children’s trust in and learning from voice assistants.

Talking with machines: Can conversational technologies serve as children's social partners?

“…When children perceive a conversational agent as more than merely mechanical, researchers can introduce the possibility of building trust with the agent. In one study, researchers directly compared children's trust in conversational agents as sources of information with their trust in humans (Girouard‐Hallam & Danovitch, 2022). In these experiments, two groups (4‐ to 5‐year‐olds and 7‐ to 8‐year‐olds, both of which were predominantly White) were asked to judge the trustworthiness of conflicting information provided by a person during a live video call and a smart speaker secretly controlled by an experimenter.…”

“…Two experimental studies have suggested that children talking with conversational agents could reap learning benefits comparable to those from conversations with humans. In the first experiment, 4‐ to 8‐year‐olds were read a list of information, half of which was provided by a human experimenter and half by a smart speaker conversational agent (Girouard‐Hallam & Danovitch, 2022). Then the children were asked to recall the information, and recall accuracy rates were similar in both groups.…”

Social robots as social learning partners: Exploring children's early understanding and learning from social robots

“…Young children can learn about the world around them through their own first-hand observations, exploration, experimentation, and by actively seeking information from social learning partners including testimony from adults (e.g., caregivers, teachers, peers; Harris, Koenig, Corriveau, & Jaswal, 2018; Wang, Tong, & Danovitch, 2019) as well as nonhuman agents such as voice assistants (Siri, Alexa; Aeschlimann, Bleiker, Wechner, & Gampe, 2020; Girouard-Hallam & Danovitch, 2022; Girouard-Hallam, Streble, & Danovitch, 2021; Oranç & Ruggeri, 2021), computers (e.g., Danovitch & Alzahabi, 2013; Noles, Danovitch, & Shafto, 2015), or social robots (Breazeal et al, 2016; Oranç & Ruggeri, 2021). Indeed, prior work demonstrates that toddlers (aged 18–24 months; Movellan, Eckhardt, Virnes, & Rodriguez, 2009) and children (aged 3–6; Tanaka & Matsuzoe, 2012) are able to learn new words from social robots, suggesting that from an early age, children treat such as agents as learning partners and critical sources of information.…”

Children's interactions with virtual assistants: Moving beyond depictions of social agents

“…Virtual assistants are interactive and conversational and behave in socially contingent ways. Recent research suggests that children as young as age 4 can effectively interact with virtual assistants (e.g., Lovato & Piper, 2015; Lovato, Piper, & Wartella, 2019; Oranç & Ruggeri, 2021; Xu & Warschauer, 2020) and, by age 7, children view them as reliable information sources (Girouard-Hallam & Danovitch, 2022). Moreover, children ascribe both artifact and non-artifact characteristics to these devices.…”

“…Moreover, children ascribe both artifact and non-artifact characteristics to these devices. Children ages 6–10 attribute mental characteristics like intelligence, social characteristics like the capacity for friendship, and some moral standing to a familiar virtual assistant (Girouard-Hallam, Streble, & Danovitch, 2021), but they also hold that virtual assistants cannot breathe and are not alive (Girouard-Hallam & Danovitch, 2022).…”