CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 32

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 4 of the 4 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Children’s Evaluations of a Therapy Dog and Biomimetic Robot: Influences of Animistic Beliefs and Social Interaction

Barber, Olivia, Somogyi, Eszter, McBride, Anne E., Proops, Leanne·2021·International Journal of Social Robotics
DOI 10.1007/s12369-020-00722-0
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Social robots are being used increasingly across a range of settings, including in the context of therapeutic interactions with children. While research has shown that interaction with live therapy dogs can be calming and enjoyable for children, it is currently unclear whether social robots can produce similar outcomes. In this study, 11–12-year old children completed a questionnaire about their biophilic beliefs and attitudes to dogs and robots before engaging in two separate free-play, non-goal directed, non-therapeutic sessions with an interactive biomimetic MiRo-E robot and a living therapy dog in a controlled setting. Behavioural observations of social interaction, initiation and reaction behaviours by the child and dog/robot showed that participants spent a similar amount of time engaging in positive social touch with the robot and the dog, but overall more time interacting with the robot. This may be because the robot was more responsive to the children’s initiation behaviours. In self-report, participants significantly preferred the session with the living dog. However, overall enjoyment was high and more positive emotions were reported following interaction with the robot. The more participants attributed mental attributes and animacy to the dog/robot, the more they enjoyed the interactions, demonstrating that participants’ animistic beliefs were an important factor in their evaluations. Levels of social interaction did not correlate with enjoyment, suggesting that the nature of the interaction was less important than pre-existing participant attitudes in producing reported positive outcomes. Although there were some differences in behaviour and evaluations, these preliminary results suggest that MiRo-E provides a useful comparison to therapy dogs and may be a suitable alternative for use in interventions with children.

Overview

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1007/s12369-020-00722-0

Cites

4 of 4 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Verification

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Citations

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 70

  1. Jalongo MR, Astorino T, Bomboy N (2004) Canine visitors the influence of therapy dogs. Early Child Educ J 32:9–16. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:ECEJ.0000039638.60714.5f · DOI
  2. Jofré ML (2005) Animal-assisted therapy in health care facilities. Rev Chilena Infectol 22:257–263
  3. Glenk LM (2017) Current perspectives on therapy dog welfare in animal-assisted interventions. Animals 7:7. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani7020007 · DOI · Paper page
  4. Meints K, Brelsford V, De KT (2018) Teaching children and parents to understand dog signaling. Front Vet Sci 5:1–14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2018.00257 · DOI
  5. Beck AM (2006) The use of animals to benefit humans: animal-assisted therapy. In: Fine AH (ed) Handbook on animal-assisted therapy. Academic Press, Cambridge, pp 21–40 · DOI
  6. McCullough A, Jenkins MA, Ruehrdanz A, Gilmer MJ, Olson J, Pawar A, Holley L, Sierra-Rivera S, Linder DE, Pichette D, Grossman NJ, Hellman C, Guérin NA, O’Haire ME (2018) Physiological and behavioral effects of animal-assisted interventions on therapy dogs in pediatric oncology settings. Appl Anim Behav Sci. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2017.11.014 · DOI · Paper page
  7. Melson GF, Kahn PH, Beck A, Friedman B, Roberts T, Garrett E, Gill BT (2009) Children’s behavior toward and understanding of robotic and living dogs. J Appl Dev Psychol 30:92–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2008.10.011 · DOI
  8. Broekens J, Heerink M, Rosendal H (2009) Assistive social robots in elderly care: a review. Gerontechnology 8:94–103. https://doi.org/10.4017/gt.2009.08.02.002.00 · DOI
  9. Coghlan S, Waycott J, Neves BB, Vetere F (2018) Using robot pets instead of companion animals for older people: a case of “reinventing the wheel”? ACM Int Conf Proc Ser. https://doi.org/10.1145/3292147.3292176 · DOI
  10. Kidd CD, Taggart W, Turkle S (2006) A sociable robot to encourage social interaction among the elderly. Proc IEEE Int Conf Robot Autom 2006:3972–3976. https://doi.org/10.1109/ROBOT.2006.1642311 · DOI · Paper page
  11. Kwakkel G, Kollen BJ, Krebs HI (2008) Effects of robot-assisted therapy on upper limb recovery after stroke: a systematic review. Neurorehabil Neural Repair 22:111–121. https://doi.org/10.1177/1545968307305457 · DOI
  12. Moriguchi Y, Kanda T, Ishiguro H, Shimada Y, Itakura S (2011) Can young children learn words from a robot? Interact Stud Stud Soc Behav Commun Biol Artif Syst. https://doi.org/10.1075/is.12.1.04mor · DOI
  13. Ferrari E, Robins B, Dautenhahn K (2009) Therapeutic and educational objectives in robot assisted play for children with autism. In: Proceedings—IEEE international workshop on robot and human interactive communication, pp 108–114 · DOI
  14. Miklósi Á, Gácsi M (2012) On the utilization of social animals as a model for social robotics. Front Psychol 3:75. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00075 · DOI
  15. Bernabei V, De Ronchi D, La Ferla T, Moretti F, Tonelli L, Ferrari B, Forlani M, Atti AR (2013) Animal-assisted interventions for elderly patients affected by dementia or psychiatric disorders: a review. J Psychiatr Res 47:762–773. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2012.12.014 · DOI
  16. Konok V, Korcsok B, Miklósi Á, Gácsi M (2018) Should we love robots?—The most liked qualities of companion dogs and how they can be implemented in social robots. Comput Human Behav 80:132–142. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.11.002 · DOI · Paper page
  17. Cross ES, Hortensius R, Wykowska A (2019) From social brains to social robots: Applying neurocognitive insights to human–robot interaction. Philos Trans R Soc B Biol Sci 374:5–8. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2018.0024 · DOI
  18. Wilson EO (1984) Biophilia. Harvard University Press, Boston · DOI
  19. McNicholas J, Collis GM (2006a) Animals as social supports: insights for understanding animal assisted therapy. In: Fine AH (ed) Handbook on animal-asissted therapy—theoretical foundations and guidelines for practice. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp 49–72
  20. Gockley R, Bruce A, Forlizzi J, Michalowski M, Mundell A, Rosenthal S, Sellner B, Simmons R, Snipes K, Schultz AC, Wang J (2005) Designing robots for long-term social interaction. In: 2005 IEEE/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems, IROS, pp 1338–1343 · DOI
  21. Beetz A (2017) Theories and possible processes of action in animal assisted interventions. Appl Dev Sci 21:139–149. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888691.2016.1262263 · DOI
  22. Donath J (2018) The robot dog fetches for whom? In: Papacharissi Z (ed) A networked self and human augmentics, artificial intelligence, sentience. Routledge, London
  23. Kazdin AE (1994) Methodology, design, and evaluation in psychotherapy research. In: Bergin AE, Garfield SL (eds) Handbook of psychotherapy and behavior change, 4th edn. American Psychological Association, Washington
  24. Sciutti A, Sandini G (2017) Interacting with robots to investigate the bases of social interaction. IEEE Trans Neural Syst Rehabil Eng 25:2295–2304. https://doi.org/10.1109/TNSRE.2017.2753879 · DOI
  25. Kahn PH (1997) Developmental psychology and the biophilia hypothesis: children’s affiliation with nature. Dev Rev 17:1–61. https://doi.org/10.1006/drev.1996.0430 · DOI
  26. Zhang W, Goodale E, Chen J (2014) How contact with nature affects children’s biophilia, biophobia and conservation attitude in China. Biol Conserv. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2014.06.011 · DOI
  27. Hills AM (1995) Empathy and belief in the mental experience of animals. Anthrozoos 8:132–142. https://doi.org/10.2752/089279395787156347 · DOI · Paper page
  28. Kahn PH, Friedman B, Pérez-Granados DR, Freier NG (2007) Robotic pets in the lives of preschool children. Interact Stud Stud Soc Behav Commun Biol Artif Syst 7:405–436. https://doi.org/10.1075/is.7.3.13kah · DOI
  29. Prescott TJ, Mitchinson B, Conran S (2017) MiRo: an animal-like companion robot with a biomimetic brain-based control system. In: ACM/IEEE international conference on human–robot interaction, pp 50–51 · DOI
  30. Hall SS, Gee NR, Mills DS (2016) Children reading to dogs: a systematic review of the literature. PLoS ONE 11:1–22. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0149759 · DOI
  31. Prescott TJ, Mitchinson B, Conran S, Power T, Bridges G (2018) MiRo: social interaction and cognition in an animal-like companion robot. ACM/IEEE Int Conf Human–Robot Interact. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173386.3177844 · DOI
  32. Collins EC, Prescott TJ, Mitchinson B, Conran S (2015) MIRO: a versatile biomimetic edutainment robot. In: Proceedings of the 12th international conference on advances in computer entertainment technology—ACE ’15 · DOI
  33. Mitchinson B, Prescott TJ (2016) A robot “Mammal” with a biomimetic brain-based control system. In: Biomimetic and biohybrid systems. 5th international conference, living machines 2016. Springer International Publishing, Edinburgh, UK, pp 179–191 · DOI
  34. Collins EC, Prescott TJ, Mitchinson B (2015) Saying it with light: a pilot study of affective communication using the MIRO robot. In: Conference on biomimetic and biohybrid systems. Springer International Publishing, pp 243–255 · DOI
  35. Barber O, Proops L (2019) Low-ability secondary school students show emotional, motivational, and performance benefits when reading to a dog versus a teacher. Anthrozoos 32:503–518. https://doi.org/10.1080/08927936.2019.1621522 · DOI
  36. Cronbach LJ (1951) Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests. Psychometrika. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02310555 · DOI · Paper page
  37. Knight S, Vrij A, Cherryman J, Nunkoosing K (2004) Attitudes towards animal use and belief in animal mind. Anthrozoos 17:43–62. https://doi.org/10.2752/089279304786991945 · DOI · Paper page
  38. Menor-Campos DJ, Hawkins R, Williams J (2018) Belief in animal mind among Spanish primary school children. Anthrozoos 31:599–614. https://doi.org/10.1080/08927936.2018.1505340 · DOI
  39. Bartneck C, Kulić D, Croft E, Zoghbi S (2009) Measurement instruments for the anthropomorphism, animacy, likeability, perceived intelligence, and perceived safety of robots. Int J Soc Robot 1:71–81. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-008-0001-3 · DOI · Paper page
  40. Miles MB, Huberman AM (1994) Qualitative data analysis. Second edition: expanded sourcebook. SAGE, Thousand Oaks
  41. Columb MO, Atkinson MS (2016) Statistical analysis: sample size and power estimations. BJA Educ 16:159–161. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjaed/mkv034 · DOI
  42. Ribi FN, Yokoyama A, Turner DC (2008) Comparison of children’s behavior toward sony’s robotic dog aibo and a real dog: a pilot study. Anthrozoos 21:245–256. https://doi.org/10.2752/175303708X332053 · DOI
  43. Zajonic RB (1968) Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. J Pers Soc Psychol. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0025848 · DOI · Paper page
  44. Breazeal C, Harris PL, Desteno D, Kory Westlund JM, Dickens L, Jeong S (2016) Young children treat robots as informants. Top Cogn Sci 8:481–491. https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12192 · DOI
  45. Pulido JC, Funke R, García J, Smith BA, Matarić M (2019) Adaptation of the difficulty level in an infant-robot movement contingency study. In: Fuentetaja PR, García OÁ, Sesmero LM, Iglesias MJ, Ledezma Espino A (eds) Advances in intelligent systems and computing. Springer, Cham
  46. Erel H, Shem Tov T, Kessler Y, Zuckerman O (2019) Robots are always social. 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290607.3312758 · DOI
  47. Edwards A, Edwards C, Westerman D, Spence PR (2019) Initial expectations, interactions, and beyond with social robots. Comput Human Behav 90:308–314. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.08.042 · DOI · Paper page
  48. McNicholas J, Collis GM (2006b) Animals as social supports: insights for understanding animal-assisted therapy. In: Fine AH (ed) Handbook on animal-assisted therapy: theoretical foundations and guidelines for practice. Academic Press, Cambridge
  49. Wells DL (2004) The facilitation of social interactions by domestic dogs. Anthrozoos. https://doi.org/10.2752/089279304785643203 · DOI · Paper page
  50. Westgarth C, Christley RM, Marvin G, Perkins E (2017) I walk my dog because it makes me happy: a qualitative study to understand why dogs motivate walking and improved health. Int J Environ Res Public Health. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14080936 · DOI
  51. Logan DE, Breazeal C, Goodwin MS, Jeong S, O’Connell B, Smith-Freedman D, Heathers J, Weinstock P (2019) Social robots for hospitalized children. Pediatrics. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2018-1511 · DOI · Paper page
  52. Deng E, Mutlu B, Mataric MJ (2019) Embodiment in socially interactive robots. Found Trends Robot 7:251–356. https://doi.org/10.1561/2300000056 · DOI
  53. Saunderson S, Nejat G (2019) How robots influence humans: a survey of nonverbal communication in social human–robot interaction. Springer, Netherlands
  54. Beetz A (2013) Socio-emotional correlates of a schooldog-teacher-team in the classroom. Front Psychol 4:1–7. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00886 · DOI
  55. Westgarth C, Boddy LM, Stratton G, German AJ, Gaskell RM, Coyne KP, Bundred P, McCune S, Dawson S (2013) Pet ownership, dog types and attachment to pets in 9–10 year old children in Liverpool. BMC Vet Res, UK. https://doi.org/10.1186/1746-6148-9-102 · DOI
  56. Chitic V, Rusu A, Szamoskozi S (2012) The effects of animal assisted therapy on communication and social skills: a meta-analysis. Transylvanian J Psychol 13:1–17
  57. Urquiza-Haas EG, Kotrschal K (2015) The mind behind anthropomorphic thinking: attribution of mental states to other species. Anim Behav 109:167–176. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2015.08.011 · DOI
  58. Wilkins AM, McCrae LS, McBride EA (2015) Factors affecting the human attribution of emotions toward animals. Anthrozoos. https://doi.org/10.1080/08927936.2015.1052270 · DOI
  59. Okanda M, Taniguchi K, Itakura S (2019) The role of animism tendencies and empathy in adult evaluations of robot. In: HAI 2019—proceedings of the 7th international conference on human–agent interaction · DOI
  60. Hoenen M, Lübke KT, Pause BM (2016) Non-anthropomorphic robots as social entities on a neurophysiological level. Comput Human Behav 57:182–186. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.12.034 · DOI
  61. Okanda M, Zhou Y, Kanda T, Ishiguro H, Itakura S (2016) Response tendencies of four-year-old children to communicative and non-communicative robots. In: HAI 2016—proceedings of the 4th international conference on human agent interaction · DOI
  62. Kim M, Yi S, Lee D (2018) Between living and nonliving: Young children’s animacy judgments and reasoning about humanoid robots. PLoS ONE 14:1–19. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0216869 · DOI
  63. Velde BP, Cipriani J, Fisher G (2005) Resident and therapist views of animal-assisted therapy: Implications for occupational therapy practice. Aust Occup Ther J 52:43–50. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1440-1630.2004.00442.x · DOI
  64. Fawcett NR, Gullone E (2001) Cute and cuddly and a whole lot more? A call for empirical investigation into the therapeutic benefits of human–animal interaction for children. Behav Chang 18:124–133. https://doi.org/10.1375/bech.18.2.124 · DOI
  65. Kamalha E, Zeng Y, Mwasiagi JI, Kyatuheire S (2013) The comfort dimension; a review of perception in clothing. J Sens Stud. https://doi.org/10.1111/joss.12070 · DOI
  66. Tarafder N (2019) The importance of consumer perceptions in fashion behaviour. Man-Made Text India 47:77–81
  67. Joye Y (2011) Biophilia in animal-assisted interventions-fad or fact? Anthrozoos 24:5–15. https://doi.org/10.2752/175303711X12923300467249 · DOI
  68. Miller E, Burton LO, Burton LO (2020) Redesigning aged care with a biophilic lens : a call to action Redesigning aged care with a biophilic lens: a call to action. Cities Heal 00:1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/23748834.2020.1772557 · DOI
  69. Koda T, Nishimura Y, Nishijima T (2016) How robot’s animacy affects human tolerance for their malfunctions? In: ACM/IEEE international conference on human–robot interaction, pp 455–456. https://doi.org/10.1109/HRI.2016.7451803 · DOI
  70. Castro-González Á, Admoni H, Scassellati B (2016) Effects of form and motion on judgments of social robots’ animacy, likability, trustworthiness and unpleasantness. Int J Hum Comput Stud 90:27–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2016.02.004 · DOI

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Metadata

Authors
Barber, O., Somogyi, E., McBride, A. E., & Proops, L.
ORCID
Venue
International Journal of Social Robotics
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2020-12-09
Volume
13
Issue
6
Pages
1411-1425
ISSN
  • 1875-4791
  • 1875-4805
DOI
10.1007/s12369-020-00722-0
Cited by
32
References
4
Language
en
Licence
Funders
  • Economic and Social Research Council (ES/P000673/1)
  • University of Portsmouth

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review