Effects of social presence and social role on help-seeking and learning

Abstract

The unique social presence of robots can be leveraged in learning situations to reduce student evaluation anxiety, while still providing instructional guidance on multiple levels of communication. Furthermore, social role of the instructor can also impact the prevalence of evaluation apprehension. In this study, we examine how human and robot social role affects help-seeking behaviors and learning outcomes in a one-on-one tutoring setting. Our results show that help-seeking is a moderator of the significant relationship between condition and learning, with the "human teacher" condition resulting in significantly less learning (and marginally less help-seeking) than the "human assistant" and both robot conditions.