Hurry Up, We Need to Find the Key! How Regulatory Focus Design Affects Children’s Trust in a Social Robot

Abstract

In educational scenarios involving social robots, understanding the way robot behaviors affect children’s motivation to achieve their learning goals is of vital importance. It is crucial for the formation of a trust relationship between the child and the robot so that the robot can effectively fulfill its role as a learning companion. In this study, we investigate the effect of a regulatory focus design scenario on the way children interact with a social robot. Regulatory focus theory is a type of self-regulation that involves specific strategies in pursuit of goals. It provides insights into how a person achieves a particular goal, either through a strategy focused on “promotion” that aims to achieve positive outcomes or through one focused on “prevention” that aims to avoid negative outcomes. In a user study, 69 children (7–9 years old) played a regulatory focus design goal-oriented collaborative game with the EMYS robot. We assessed children’s perception of likability and competence and their trust in the robot, as well as their willingness to follow the robot’s suggestions when pursuing a goal. Results showed that children perceived the prevention-focused robot as being more likable than the promotion-focused robot. We observed that a regulatory focus design did not directly affect trust. However, the perception of likability and competence was positively correlated with children’s trust but negatively correlated with children’s acceptance of the robot’s suggestions.

“And then what happens?” Promoting Children's Verbal Creativity Using a Robot

“…Some cHRI studies investigated the effects of RFT on children interacting with a social robot. Researchers found that children in the prevention condition perceived the robot as more likeable than those assigned to the promotion one [29]; the authors suggested as a possible interpretation that the robot expressed more vulnerability (i.e., fear) in the prevention condition, leading children to perceive it as more likeable and relatable. Nevertheless, children assigned to the promotion condition expressed more happiness and were more engaged with the robot during the interaction than those assigned to the prevention condition [30].…”

Understanding Children’s Trust Development through Repeated Interactions with a Virtual Social Robot

“…Following up on our previous research [6], this study aimed to investigate how repeated interactions of a collaborative storytelling game could influence children's perceptions of a social robot. We propose the following RQ:…”

“…We built a simplified version of the storytelling game developed in [6]. Children created a story with the robot during the interactive storytelling game.…”

“…Previous studies have shown that children form first impressions of a robot's trustworthiness in a few seconds [4]. Furthermore, children's perceptions of trust have been assessed after interacting with a social robot in short-term interactions [5], [6]. However, these perceptions of trust in robots could be highly influenced by the novelty effect [7], and it is unclear whether children's perceptions of social robots generalized across repeated encounters [8].…”