Perspective taking encourages cleaning task performance: a child-robot interaction

Abstract

This paper presents a robot-mediated learning environment for children, exploring the possibility of motivating children to focus on a socially appropriate, but unappealing task. To examine the effect quantitatively, we incorporated the task of cleaning up toy blocks. Performance was measured by the number of blocks children cleaned up. We compared results in three different cases: without the robot, with the robot programmed to take children's perspective in a moderate way, and with the robot programmed to take children's perspective in a strong or repeated way. The findings were very interesting. Perspective taking in both cases increased children's intimacy with the robot and enhanced cleaning performance. However, we found that strong stimuli generated a lower level of intimacy but a higher cleaning performance than moderate stimuli. On the basis of these findings, we propose potential applications of robot-mediated learning for young children.