I hear your yes‐no questions: Children's response tendencies to a humanoid robot

Abstract

Abstract This study investigated the responses of 4‐ and 5‐year‐old Japanese children to yes‐no questions about familiar and unfamiliar objects that were asked by a communicative or a non‐communicative humanoid robot. The children in the communicative condition watched a pretrial video in which a humanoid robot interacted with a human adult, and those in the non‐communicative condition watched a pretrial video in which the same humanoid robot was unresponsive to the same human adult's utterances and actions. Then, all the children watched a video in which the robot asked 24 yes‐no questions. The results indicated that 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds in the two conditions showed similar response tendencies, with no age differences. Further, the children showed no response biases to familiar objects and nay‐saying bias to unfamiliar objects. Children's perception of robots is discussed. Highlights We investigated whether 4‐ to 5‐year‐olds answer humanoid robot's yes‐no questions. The children were asked yes‐no questions by either a communicative and non‐communicative humanoid robot. Children in both age groups in two conditions showed similar response tendencies to humanoid robot: They may have expectation for humanoid robots that they are communicative partner.