Do Shy Children Behave Differently than Non-shy Children in a Long-term Child-robot Interaction?

Abstract

Social robots offer versatile possibilities to engage children in social interaction and are increasingly implemented in educational contexts. However, how children enter into social interaction with an interlocutor is substantially influenced by their temperament. In this paper, we present preliminary findings of a long-term study on child-robot interaction for language learning, in which we focused on children's positive and negative expressions of shyness within the interaction over multiple sessions with the robot. We found that shy children initially displayed significantly fewer positive signals. However, in the long term, shy children seem to be able to overcome their restrained behavior in interaction with the robot.