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Higher Nonverbal Immediacy Leads to Greater Learning Gains in Child-Robot Tutoring Interactions

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Social Robotics (ICSR 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 9388))

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Abstract

Nonverbal immediacy has been positively correlated with cognitive learning gains in human-human interaction, but remains relatively under-explored in human-robot interaction contexts. This paper presents a study in which robot behaviour is derived from the principles of nonverbal immediacy. Both high and low immediacy behaviours are evaluated in a tutoring interaction with children where a robot teaches how to work out whether numbers are prime. It is found that children who interact with the robot exhibiting more immediate nonverbal behaviour make significant learning gains, whereas those interacting with the less immediate robot do not. A strong trend is found suggesting that the children can perceive the differences between conditions, supporting results from existing work with adults.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Robotics and Neural Systems, Plymouth University, Plymouth, UK

    James Kennedy, Paul Baxter, Emmanuel Senft & Tony Belpaeme

Authors
  1. James Kennedy
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  2. Paul Baxter
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  3. Emmanuel Senft
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  4. Tony Belpaeme
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to James Kennedy .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Robotics and Computer Vision Lab, ENSTA-ParisTech, Palaiseau, France

    Adriana Tapus

  2. Inst für Informatik, Human-Ctr Multimedi, Universität Augsburg, Augsburg, Bayern, Germany

    Elisabeth André

  3. LIMSI-CNRS, Orsay, France

    Jean-Claude Martin

  4. Robotics and Computer Vision Lab, ENSTA-ParisTech, Palaiseau, France

    François Ferland

  5. LIMSI-CNRS, Orsay, France

    Mehdi Ammi

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© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Kennedy, J., Baxter, P., Senft, E., Belpaeme, T. (2015). Higher Nonverbal Immediacy Leads to Greater Learning Gains in Child-Robot Tutoring Interactions. In: Tapus, A., André, E., Martin, JC., Ferland, F., Ammi, M. (eds) Social Robotics. ICSR 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9388. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25554-5_33

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25554-5_33

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-25553-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-25554-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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