• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.237-259
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to examine how children perceived the use of intelligent service robots in early childhood education and identifying the characteristics of the interaction between the children concerned and the robots. The subjects of this study were 49 kindergarten students from Girin Kindergarten in Gyeonggi-do. The results of this study suggested that the children personalized the robot and recognized it as their friend, regardless of their ages. In the interactions between the children and the robot, the children engaged in physical contact with the robot and occasionally tried to control its functions. In the child-robot interaction, the children searched their favorite functions and used them repeatedly, but also lost interest in those repeated functions. Regardless of their interest levels, however, the attendance or portfolio organization functions. With regard to the interaction between peers, there were frequent quarrels regarding the use of the robot at first, but these conflicts were resolved by the intervention of peers or teachers, and the children who were familiar with the use of the robot helped their friends; this was viewed as constituting cooperative behavior. Children usually used the robot with their friends. The robot was a medium for children to find new friends. Peer group activities were explored and new friendships were created as a result of the use of the robot.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.97-111
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• 2008

This paper presents three related experiments designed to identify factors that may affect the level of intimacy between children and a robot placed in a kindergarten setting. In total, 68 children aged three to five took part in the experiments, where they were instructed to share four or five stickers with a robot as they wished. Data were collected by means of video-taping and by interviewing the motivations of the children for their conducts in the experiment. The results of the study suggest the following factors that may affect the extent to which a child feels intimacy towards a robot: gender, age, prior experiences with a robot, interaction time with a robot, and the perception of robot appearance design.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.1-14
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to investigate young children's perceptions of a teacher assistant robot, IrobiQ. in a kindergarten classroom. The subjects of this study were 23 6-year-olds attending to G kindergarten located in E city, Korea, where the teacher assistant robot had been in operation since Oct. 2008. Each child responded to questions assessing the child's perceptions of IrobiQ's identity regarding four domains : it's biological, intellectual, emotional and social identity. Some questions asked the child to affirm or deny some characteristics pertaining to the robot and the other questions asked the reasons for the answer given. The results indicated that while majority of children considered an IrobiQ not as a biological entity, but as a machine, they thought it could have an emotion and be their playmate. The implications of these results are two folds : firstly, they force us to reconsider the traditional ontological categories regarding intelligent service robots to understand human-robot interaction and secondly, they open up an ecological perspective on the design of teacher assistant robots for use with young children in early childhood education settings.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.447-454
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• 2022

This paper presents the psychomotorik-based play activities executed by the social robot at home which helps children's social and emotional development. Based on the theory and practice of the psychomotorik therapy, the play activities were implemented in the close collaboration between psychmotorik experts, service designers and robotics engineers. The designed play activities are classified into four categories depending on the main areas of child development. The robotic system that can express verbal and nonverbal behaviors was developed in order to play games with children and but also to make children have continuous interest during the play activities with it. Finally, the psychomotorik-based play service scenario and interactive robot system were validated by the expert group from the domain of child psychotherapy. The evaluation results showed that the play service and the robot system were appropriately developed for children from the experts point of view.

• The Journal of Korean Academic Society of Nursing Education
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.81-88
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• 2009

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the behavioral responses to a robot pet in pre-school children. Method: This activity for children was conducted for 5 days at a kindergarten and each session lasted 30 minutes. In order to measure children's temperament, Chun Heeyoung's Temperament Rating Scale was used. In addition, to investigate the behavioral responses to a robot pet, each session was videotaped. The videotape data was analyzed according to child-robot interaction. Result: On the average, subjects scored highest in emotionality and lowest in activity for the temperamental subscale. The videotape data revealed verbal, positive nonverbal, and negative nonverbal interaction. Conclusions: These results suggest that child-robot interaction reflects temperamental characteristics, therefore, to develop a nursing intervention program using a robot, it is necessary to consider individual differences and recreational factors to grab children's interest.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.365-374
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• 2020

In this paper, we analyzed how 5-year-old children perceive a robot's ability to attribute mental states to oneself and to others, which shall hereafter be referred to as a robot's theory of mind (RToM). A total of 34 5-year-old children were given two typical false-belief tasks, an 'unexpected-contents task' and a 'change-of-location task', in order to evaluate whether a child's perceived RToM was connected to their own ToM. In addition, we investigated whether a child's perception of RToM was influenced by either a priori experience with robots or that child's gender. The results are as follows. Firstly, the 5- year-old preschool children universally recognized robots as beings that have a human-like mind both in 1st order and 2nd order perspectives, which indicates that children perceive robots as beings distinct from mechanical toys. Secondly, a priori child-robot interaction experience was found to have a positive influence on a child's perceived RToM. Thirdly, the gender of children did not significantly affect their perceived RToM. This study serves to add to the macroscopic results of prior research, which indicate that children perceive robots as intermediate beings between living and inanimate objects: significantly, it analyzes the children's perception of robots through the lens of theory of mind, which is one of the key elements of cognitive development. This research lays the foundations for designing effective child-robot interactions, in situations in which robots serve as peers or assistants for educational purposes.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.376-384
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• 2017

In this paper, we describe a case of using robot technology in child studies to examine children's judgement and reasoning of the life phenomenon on boundary objects. In order to control the effects of the appearance of the robot, which children observe or interact directly with, on the children's judgement and reasoning of the life phenomenon, we developed a robot similar to human. Unit experimental scenarios representing biological and psychological properties were implemented based on control of robot's motion, speech, and facial expressions. Experimenters could combine these multiple unit scenarios in a cascade to implement various scenarios of the human-robot interaction. Considering that the experimenters are researchers of child studies, there was a need to develop a remote operation console that can be easily used by non-experts in the robot field. Using the developed robot platform, researchers of child studies could implement various scenarios by manipulating the biological and psychological properties of the robot based on their research hypothesis. As a result, we could clearly see the effects of robot's properties on children's understanding about boundary object like robots.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2022.05a
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• pp.147-149
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• 2022

This paper proposes a state machine design methodology in which an interactive robot that mimics discrete trial training (DTT protocol) can support social interaction training for children with autism. The robot applied to social interaction training uses the response to the provided training stimulus as a quantitative indicator by processing the data received from the sensors measuring the behavioral response of the child. In this process, the state machine is used as information that classifies the state of the acquired data and provides the subsequent stimulus for DTT protocol. Through the joint attentional training, it can be used as evidence-based treatment information by quantitatively classifying the data on the number of sustainable and DTT protocol and the child's response, as well as the current reaction status of the child to the observer performing remote monitoring. At the same time, it was confirmed that it is possible to properly respond to misrecognition situations.

• Journal of Convergence for Information Technology
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.109-118
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• 2020

The purpose of this research is to investigate the effects of interaction, gender, and age on preschool children's intimate relationship with entertainment robot dog. For this purpose, two kinds of experiments were conducted for 70 preschool children in day care centers in Seoul. Experiment 1 relates to the interaction with entertainment robot dog, 34 children aged 5 years (17 experimental groups, 17 comparative groups). Experiment 2 was a study on the effects of gender and age. A total of 36 children (pre- and post-group) of 12 children aged 3, 4, and 5 years old were included. This study interviewed the number of distributions and the motivations for distribution by using the "Dividing Game(Distribution Principle)" interview. As a result, firstly the group experiencing the interaction felt more intimate with the entertainment robot dog, and the reason was emotional factor the most(Experiment 1). Second, gender had no significant effect on entertainment robot dog intimacy and age showed a reverted U-shape. The above results are meaningful in that it reveals what kind of factors affecting the intimacy between the preschooler and entertainment robot dog.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.61-69
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• 2015

In this paper, we propose and examine the feasibility of the robot-assisted behavioral intervention system so as to strengthen positive response of the children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) for learning social skills. Based on well-known behavioral treatment protocols, the robot offers therapeutic training elements of eye contact and emotion reading respectively in child-robot interaction, and it subsequently accomplishes pre-allocated meaningful acts by estimating the level of children's reactivity from reliable recognition modules, as a coping strategy. Furthermore, for the purpose of labor saving and attracting children's interest, we implemented the robotic stimulation configuration with semi-autonomous actions capable of inducing intimacy and tension to children in instructional trials. From these configurations, by evaluating the ability of recognizing human activity as well as by showing improved reactivity for social training, we verified that the proposed system has some positive effects on social development, targeted for preschoolers who have a high functioning level.