Parental Responses to Aggressive Child Behavior towards Robots, Smart Speakers, and Tablets

Abstract

The increasing growth of robots and other technological devices in homes makes it critical to understand child- device interactions within the home, especially given the real possibility of child aggression towards these devices. To explore factors that currently and will, in the future, shape child-robot interaction in the home related to children’s aggressive behavior, we conducted a 2 x 3 x 3 between-subjects crowdsourced study (N = 332) that examined how parents would respond and perceive their child interacting with different technological devices. Participants were shown a video clip of a person interacting with a technological device (robot, smart speaker, or tablet), exhibiting either aggressive or neutral behavior, and interacting with the device in one of three interaction modalities (audio, physical, or audio+physical). Imagining that the person in the video was their child, parents who observed aggressive behavior compared with neutral behavior indicated greater concern, a higher likelihood to intervene, distinct intervention methods, a higher perception of device mistreatment, and greater sympathy for the device. Despite hypothesizing that the robot would be seen as the most anthropomorphic, animate and, warm device, participant ratings of the robot were no different than the smart speaker, however, both devices were rated more highly on those dimensions than the tablet.