The role of social cues in infants’ word segmentation when interacting with a Furhat Robot

摘要

As social robots become household staples providing language input to infants, it is crucial to determine the conditions under which infants can learn from them. Here, we investigate whether infants process speech provided by a robot, and whether robot-provided social cues enhance their attention and speech processing performance. Specifically, we tested 8- to 13-month-old German-learning infants ($\mathbf{3 2 ~ n}$). We used a classical speech segmentation paradigm, modified such that a Furhat robot spoke the text. There were two familiarization conditions: one in which the Furhat recited text passages containing two target words while maintaining “eye contact” with the infants, and one in which the Furhat did not express any social cues. Afterwards, infants were tested for their recognition of target words vs. novel words. Linear mixed-effects models revealed a marginal preference in the condition without social cues, with longer looking times to the novel than to familiar words, but no preference in the condition with social cues. There was a marginal interaction between social cue condition and word type. Pearson correlations revealed no relationship between attention to the robot during the familiarization and speech segmentation performance. Although exploratory, the finding that infants in the control condition outperformed infants in the social cue condition raises questions about the effectiveness and naturalness of the provided cues, highlighting the importance of improving these aspects in future robot designs.