"Stop. I See a Conflict Happening." A Robot Mediator for Young Children's Interpersonal Conflict Resolution

The ability to constructively resolve interpersonal conflicts is a crucial set of social skills people need to effectively work and live well together. Is it possible to design social robots to support the early development of children's interpersonal conflict resolution skills? To investigate...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:2018 13th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) pp. 69 - 77
Main Authors: Shen, Solace, Slovak, Petr, Jung, Malte F.
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Published: New York, NY, USA ACM 26.02.2018
Series:ACM Conferences
Subjects:
Human-centered computing > Interaction design > Empirical studies in interaction design
Human-robot interaction
Mediation
Process control
Protocols
Robots
Shape
Switches
interpersonal conflict resolution
child dyad-robot interaction
ISBN:9781450349536, 1450349536
ISSN:2167-2148
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The ability to constructively resolve interpersonal conflicts is a crucial set of social skills people need to effectively work and live well together. Is it possible to design social robots to support the early development of children's interpersonal conflict resolution skills? To investigate this question, 64 (32 pairs of) children ages 3-6 years engaged in a 50-minute play session consisting of 5 activities facilitated by the robot Keepon. Children were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 conditions. In the mediation condition, Keepon directed the play session flow by indicating when and which activity to switch to, and whenever possible, signaled the onset of object possession conflicts that occurred between the pair and offered prompts for constructive conflict resolution. In the control condition, Keepon only facilitated and directed the play session and did not intervene during children's conflicts. Results show that children were more likely to resolve conflicts constructively in the mediation condition than in the control condition, and that a key function for a robot mediator within the conflict process is to successfully flag the conflict onset. Drawing from these findings, we discuss design recommendation for a robot mediator.
ISBN:9781450349536
1450349536
ISSN:2167-2148
DOI:10.1145/3171221.3171248