Search

Your search keyword '"Westlund, Jacqueline M. Kory"' showing total 6 results
Start Over Author "Westlund, Jacqueline M. Kory"
6 results on '"Westlund, Jacqueline M. Kory"'

1. Measuring Young Children's Long-Term Relationships with Social Robots

Author

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory, Westlund, Jacqueline M. Kory, Park, Hae Won, Williams, Randi, Breazeal, Cynthia, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory, Westlund, Jacqueline M. Kory, Park, Hae Won, Williams, Randi, and Breazeal, Cynthia

Abstract

© 2018 Association for Computing Machinery. Social robots are increasingly being developed for long-term interactions with children in domains such as healthcare, education, therapy, and entertainment. As such, we need to deeply understand how children's relationships with robots develop through time. However, there are few validated assessments for measuring young children's long-term relationships. In this paper, we present a pilot test of four assessments that we have adapted or created for use in this context with children aged 5-6: the Inclusion of Other in Self task, the Social-Relational Interview, the Narrative Description, and the Self-disclosure Task. We show that children can appropriately respond to these assessments with reasonably high internal reliability, and that the proposed assessments are able to capture child-robot relationship adjustments over a long-term interaction. Furthermore, we discuss gender and population differences in children's responses.

Published
2021

4. Flat vs. Expressive Storytelling: Young Children's Learning and Retention of a Social Robot's Narrative.

Author

Westlund, Jacqueline M. Kory, Jeong, Sooyeon, Park, Hae W., Ronfard, Samuel, Adhikari, Aradhana, Harris, Paul L., Desteno, David, and Breazeal, Cynthia L.

Subjects
ROBOTICS in education, PRESCHOOL education, VOCABULARY education, STORYTELLING in education, LANGUAGE acquisition testing, PSYCHOLOGY of reading
Abstract

Prior research with preschool children has established that dialogic or active book reading is an effective method for expanding young children's vocabulary. In this exploratory study, we asked whether similar benefits are observed when a robot engages in dialogic reading with preschoolers. Given the established effectiveness of active reading, we also asked whether this effectiveness was critically dependent on the expressive characteristics of the robot. For approximately half the children, the robot's active reading was expressive; the robot's voice included a wide range of intonation and emotion (Expressive). For the remaining children, the robot read and conversed with a flat voice, which sounded similar to a classic text-to-speech engine and had little dynamic range (Flat). The robot's movements were kept constant across conditions. We performed a verification study using Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) to confirm that the Expressive robot was viewed as significantly more expressive, more emotional, and less passive than the Flat robot. We invited 45 preschoolers with an average age of 5 years who were either English Language Learners (ELL), bilingual, or native English speakers to engage in the reading task with the robot. The robot narrated a story from a picture book, using active reading techniques and including a set of target vocabulary words in the narration. Children were post-tested on the vocabulary words and were also asked to retell the story to a puppet. A subset of 34 children performed a second story retelling 4-6 weeks later. Children reported liking and learning from the robot a similar amount in the Expressive and Flat conditions. However, as compared to children in the Flat condition, children in the Expressive condition were more concentrated and engaged as indexed by their facial expressions; they emulated the robot's story more in their story retells; and they told longer stories during their delayed retelling. Furthermore, children who responded to the robot's active reading questions were more likely to correctly identify the target vocabulary words in the Expressive condition than in the Flat condition. Taken together, these results suggest that children may benefit more from the expressive robot than from the flat robot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published
2017
Full Text
View/download PDF

5. Transparency, Teleoperation, and Children's Understanding of Social Robots.

Author

Westlund, Jacqueline M. Kory and Breazeal, Cynthia

Subjects
REMOTE control, ROBOT control systems, HUMAN-robot interaction, SOCIAL robots, DECEPTION
Abstract

Teleoperation or Wizard-of-Oz control of social robots is commonly used in human-robot interaction (HRI) research. This is especially true for child-robot interactions, where technologies like speech recognition (which can help create autonomous interactions for adults) work less well. We propose to study young children's understanding teleoperation, how they conceptualize social robots in a learning context, and how this affects their interactions. Children will be told about the teleoperator's presence either before or after an interaction with a social robot. We will assess children's behavior, learning, and emotions before, during, and after the interaction. Our goal is to learn whether children's knowledge about the teleoperator matters (e.g., for their trust and for learning outcomes), and if so, how and when it matters most (e.g. at what age). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published
2016

6. A Study to Measure the Effect of Framing a Robot as a Social Agent or as a Machine on Children's Social Behavior.

Author

Westlund, Jacqueline M. Kory, Martinez, Marayna, Archie, Maryam, Das, Madhurima, and Breazeal, Cynthia

Subjects
HUMAN-robot interaction, PRIMING (Psychology), INTERPERSONAL relations, SOCIAL robots, CHILDREN'S social networks, ANTHROPOMORPHISM
Abstract

Framing or priming a situation can subtly influence how a person reacts to or thinks about the situation. In this paper, we describe a recent study and some preliminary results in which the framing of a robot is manipulated such that it is presented as a social agent or as a machine-like entity. We ask whether framing the robot in these ways influences young children's social behavior during an interaction with the robot, independent of any changes in the robot itself. Following the framing manipulation, children play a fifteen-minute game with the robot. Their behavior, such as the amount of conversation, mimicry of the robot, and various courteous, prosocial actions will be coded and compared across conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published
2016

Catalog

Books, media, physical & digital resources
See catalog results