Creativity Encounters Between Children and Robots

Abstract

Creativity is an intrinsic human ability with multiple benefits across lifespan. Despite its importance, societies not always are well equipped to provide contexts for creativity stimulation; as a consequence, a major decline in creative abilities occurs at the age of 7 years old. In this paper, we investigated the effectiveness of using a robotic system named YOLO, as an intervention tool to stimulate creativity in children. During the intervention, children used YOLO as a character for their stories and through the interaction with the robot, creative abilities were stimulated. Our study (n = 62) included 3 experimental conditions: i) YOLO displayed behaviors based on creativity techniques; ii) YOLO displayed behaviors based on creativity techniques plus social behaviors; iii) YOLO was turned off, not displaying any behaviors. We measured children's creative abilities at pre and posttesting and their creative process through behavior analysis. Results showed that the interaction with YOLO contributed to higher creativity levels in children, specifically contributing to the generation of more original ideas during story creation. This study shows the potential of using social robots as tools to empower intrinsic human abilities, such as the ability of being creative.