Children learn second language words better through more involvement with robots
When children interact with robots over a long period of time, they inevitably develop a relationship with them. Mirjam de Haas investigated how this relationship and involvement with the robot can change over time due to the robot's behavior. More familiarity with the robot leads to better learning performance in the long run. De Haas will receive her doctorate on April 20.
De Haas and her team investigated also whether feedback and gestures affected learning and engagement. De Haas interviewed PABO students to provide input on robot feedback and found that this had an effect: children were more engaged with the robot and with their tasks when they interacted with a robot that used the "teacher-selected" feedback. Moreover, in an interview after the experiment, some children said they liked it better when the robot helped them find the right answer. Like the use of gestures, this enhances the relationship with the robot.
Seeing robot as human being
She found that children saw the robot more like a human being before an experiment than after the experiment. Boys in particular began to see the robot more like a computer after a longer period of time. The change in perception may be because the children had very high expectations before the experiment, which the robot could not meet, and therefore they adjusted their perception of the robot after the experiment.
This research is part of the Horizon 2020 L2TOR project1, in which six different universities and two companies collaborated and investigated whether a robot could teach preschoolers words from a second language.
De Haas: 'It's good to use robots already for short, separate lessons in schools, but it's also important to keep doing research on longer-term effects. With these additional experiments in mind, we are confident that robots will increasingly be able to support the teachers of the future.
Note to the press
Mirjam de Haas will receive her PhD on April 20 at 2 p.m. in the auditorium with a livestream.The title of her dissertation is: Staying engaged in child-robot interaction. Supervisor: Prof. Dr. E.J. Krahmer, Copromotor: Dr. P.A. Vogt. For more information please contact: persvoorlichters@tilburguniversity.edu or tel. 013 4664000.