Children’s Trust in Robots and the Information They Provide

Abstract

Previous work has shown that children tend to trust embodied conversational agents such as social robots. Also, that children have difficulty assessing the credibility of information. The study reported in this paper addresses how children’s attitudes toward and trust in a robot affect their acceptance of information provided by the robot. We conducted a within-subjects study (N=30) where children engaged with a ‘trustworthy’ versus an ‘untrustworthy’ robot. Due to the pandemic period, this interaction was carried out via video call. The children played a quiz with the robot where we measured whether they accepted the information provided by the robot. Results show that the manipulation of trustworthiness was successful. We did not find evidence for a causal relationship between trust in the robot and acceptance of the information. Furthermore, semi-structured interviews offered a more in-depth understanding of how children perceived the two different robots and their preference for the trustworthy robot.