Marissa McCoy

About

Marissa McCoy is a leading researcher at the intersection of human-robot interaction, social-emotional learning, and educational technology. Her work explores how socially assistive robots can enhance children’s emotional development and storytelling abilities, with a particular focus on how interaction context—individual versus group settings—shapes engagement and learning outcomes. Her most cited paper, “Emotional Storytelling in the Classroom” (101 citations), investigates the role of group dynamics in robot-assisted interventions, while “Comparing Models of Disengagement in Individual and Group Interactions” (81 citations) provides foundational insights into how group size affects data-driven models for human-robot interaction. McCoy’s research on emotional intelligence in artificial agents (“Do We Need Emotionally Intelligent Artificial Agents?”) and her studies on trust, reliance, and stress coping in human-robot teams have garnered significant attention, with her work on social interaction moderating trust-reliance relationships (28 citations) highlighting the importance of social cues in building effective human-robot partnerships. She has also developed algorithms for autonomous disengagement repair in multiparty child-robot interactions, advancing the practical deployment of robots in classrooms. McCoy’s contributions are shaping the future of emotionally intelligent, context-aware robotic systems for education and beyond.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Emotional Storytelling in the Classroom

   101 citations · 2015
2. 2
   Comparing Models of Disengagement in Individual and Group Interactions

   81 citations · 2015
3. 3
   Do We Need Emotionally Intelligent Artificial Agents? First Results of Human Perceptions of Emotional Intelligence in Humans Compared to Robots

   65 citations · 2017
4. 4
   Narratives with Robots: The Impact of Interaction Context and Individual Differences on Story Recall and Emotional Understanding

   50 citations · 2017
5. 5
   Social interaction moderates human-robot trust-reliance relationship and improves stress coping

   28 citations · 2016
6. 6
   Social Interaction Moderates Human-Robot Trust-Reliance Relationship and Improves Stress Coping

   19 citations · 2016
7. 7
   Autonomous disengagement classification and repair in multiparty child-robot interaction

   10 citations · 2016
8. 8
   The Impact of Non-Technical skills on Trust and Stress

   6 citations · 2017
9. 9
   Perceived role of physiological sensors impacts trust and reliance on robots

   3 citations · 2016

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links