Can Children Catch Curiosity from a Social Robot?
Open accessAbstract
Curiosity is key to learning, yet school children show wide variability in their eagerness to acquire information. Recent research suggests that other people have a strong influence on children's exploratory behavior. Would a curious robot elicit children's exploration and the desire to find out new things? In order to answer this question we designed a novel experimental paradigm in which a child plays an education tablet app with an autonomous social robot, which is portrayed as a younger peer. We manipulated the robot's behavior to be either curiosity-driven or not and measured the child's curiosity after the interaction. We show that some of the child's curiosity measures are significantly higher after interacting with a curious robot, compared to a non-curious one, while others do not. These results suggest that interacting with an autonomous social curious robot can selectively guide and promote children's curiosity.
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Social robots have been shown to promote curiosity and engagement in children.
“Previously, social robots have been shown to promote curiosity and engagement in children (Gordon et al., 2015; Park et al., 2017), and it would be valuable to explore such functionality with older adults.”
From Personal Narratives in Technology Design: The Value of Sharing Older Adults’ Stories in the Design of Social Robots (2021) · cites this paper as Gordon et al., 2015
Children do not engage in curiosity-driven behaviors mainly because they fail to see the uncertainties they have about their own knowledge.
“This strategy is inspired from studies such as [16] where authors show that children do not engage in curiositydriven behaviors mainly because they fail to see the uncertainties they have about their own knowledge.”
From GPT-3-Driven Pedagogical Agents to Train Children’s Curious Question-Asking Skills (2024) · cites this paper as [16]
Question-generation tasks can be quite difficult for children.
“we choose to maintain the linguistic help (i.e. the questioning word that can be used to start the question) for our three conditions as question-generation tasks can be quite difficult for children, as shown in [16].”
From GPT-3-Driven Pedagogical Agents to Train Children’s Curious Question-Asking Skills (2024) · cites this paper as [16]
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BackgroundRudenko, I., Rudenko, A., Lilienthal, A. J., Arras, K. O., & Bruno, B. (2024) · International Journal of Social Robotics · doi:10.1007/s12369-024-01121-5 · Cited by 27 · see citing works
“The number and duration of interactions play a key role in letting positive dynamics surface, as it is unrealistic to expect a significant and durable improvement in performance as a result of a single interaction, as short as 10 or 15 minutes [35,45,47].”
BackgroundOstrowski, A. K., Harrington, C. N., Breazeal, C., & Park, H. W. (2021) · Frontiers in Robotics and AI · doi:10.3389/frobt.2021.716581 · Cited by 26 · see citing works
“Previously, social robots have been shown to promote curiosity and engagement in children (Gordon et al., 2015; Park et al., 2017), and it would be valuable to explore such functionality with older adults.”
BackgroundSelf-citationZhao, H.-G., Li, X., & Kang, X. (2024) · Humanities and Social Sciences Communications · doi:10.1057/s41599-024-03839-z · Cited by 38 · see citing works
CreativeBot: a Creative Storyteller robot to stimulate creativity in children
Elgarf, M., Zojaji, S., Skantze, G., & Peters, C. (2022) · INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MULTIMODAL INTERACTION · doi:10.1145/3536221.3556578 · Cited by 24 · see citing works
“Previous studies demonstrate that children may mirror a robot’s behavior such as curiosity [18], creativity [3] and growth mindset [27].”
BackgroundPower in Human-Robot Interaction
Hou, Y. T.-Y., Cheon, E., & Jung, M. F. (2024) · ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) · doi:10.1145/3610977.3634949 · Cited by 27 · see citing works
Backchannel opportunity prediction for social robot listeners
Park, H. W., Gelsomini, M., Lee, J. J., Zhu, T., & Breazeal, C. (2017) · Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation/Proceedings · doi:10.1109/icra.2017.7989266 · Cited by 23 · see citing works
Self-citationMultifaceted information-seeking motives in children
Molinaro, G., Dezza, I. C., Bühler, S. K., Moutsiana, C., & Sharot, T. (2023) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/s41467-023-40971-x · Cited by 22 · see citing works
“Our research may also inspire technological advances that could provide pedagogical tools for children based on their information-seeking preferences, such as arti fi cial learning companions 52,53 .”
Improving human-robot interaction based on joint attention
Dağlarlı, E., Dağlarlı, S. F., Günel, G. Ö., & Köse, H. (2017) · Applied Intelligence · doi:10.1007/s10489-016-0876-x · Cited by 21 · see citing works
Gamborino, E., Yueh, H., Lin, W., Yeh, S., & Fu, L. (2019) · IEEE RO-MAN · doi:10.1109/ro-man46459.2019.8956460 · Cited by 21 · see citing works
“also have a breadth of research [11-13] on human robot interaction aimed at children.”
BackgroundCan Children Emulate a Robotic Non-Player Character's Figural Creativity?
Ali, S., Park, H. W., & Breazeal, C. (2020) · Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play · doi:10.1145/3410404.3414251 · Cited by 20 · see citing works
“Therefore, it is not surprising that social robots have been used as a psychological study tool, such as studying children’s emulation of growth mindset and curiosity while interacting with a social peer [19, 38].”
BackgroundResultSelf-citationRobots’ Social Behaviors for Language Learning: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Wang, F., & Cheung, A. (2024) · Review of Educational Research · doi:10.3102/00346543231216437 · Cited by 19 · see citing works
“%) were included most, with junior middle school students of 10%, and the mixed grades of students of 12% (Akalin et al., 2014; gordon & Breazeal, 2015; gordon et al., 2015; Jacq et al., 2016; Kory-Westlund, 2019; Uluer et al., 2015).”
InfluentialCan Conversational Agents Change the Way Children Talk to People?
Hiniker, A., Wang, A., Tran, J., Zhang, M. R., Radesky, J. S., Sobel, K., & Hong, S.-S. (2021) · ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC) · doi:10.1145/3459990.3460695 · Cited by 19 · see citing works
“Other work has demonstrated that anthropomorphic technologies can promote increased curiosity [28].”
BackgroundCreativity in Humans, Robots, Humbots
Lubart, T., Esposito, D., Gubenko, A., & Houssemand, C. (2021) · Creativity Theories – Research – Applications · doi:10.2478/ctra-2021-0003 · Cited by 19 · see citing works
“In addition to direct help provided during the human creative process, social robots have been used as tools to promote the learning of certain types of creativity-relevant behavior such as curiosity, perseverance or attention (Belpaeme et al., 2018; Gordon et al., 2015; Park et al., 2019).”
MethodSocial behaviour as an emergent property of embodied curiosity: a robotics perspective
Gordon, G. (2019) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rstb.2018.0029 · Cited by 18 · see citing works
Self-citationSoftware architecture for YOLO, a creativity-stimulating robot
Alves‐Oliveira, P., Gomes, S., Chandak, A., Arriaga, P., Hoffman, G., & Paiva, A. (2020) · SoftwareX · doi:10.1016/j.softx.2020.100461 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
Patricc: A Platform for Triadic Interaction with Changeable Characters
Gvirsman, O., Koren, Y., Norman, T., & Gordon, G. (2020) · Proceedings of the 2020 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction · doi:10.1145/3319502.3374792 · Cited by 18 · see citing works
“Most educational scenarios involved an additional screen, e.g. tablets, to supply the content and an object for joint attention [12, 33].”
BackgroundSelf-citationMulti3: Multi-Sensory Perception System for Multi-Modal Child Interaction with Multiple Robots
Tsiami, A., Koutras, P., Efthymiou, N., Filntisis, P. P., Potamianos, G., & Maragos, P. A. (2018) · Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation/Proceedings · doi:10.1109/icra.2018.8461210 · Cited by 17 · see citing works
“the development and enhancement of communicative abilities [12].”
BackgroundCuriosity Did Not Kill the Robot
Doering, M., Liu, P., Glas, D. F., Kanda, T., Kulić, D., & Ishiguro, H. (2019) · ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction · doi:10.1145/3326462 · Cited by 17 · see citing works
“For instance, eliciting curiosity in humans was investigated for a robot that generated unpredictable responses (Law et al. 2017) and for a robot that demonstrated curiosity in its verbal expressions (Gordon et al. 2015).”
Backgroundvan den Berghe, R., Oudgenoeg‐Paz, O., Verhagen, J., Brouwer, S. M., de Haas, M., de Wit, J., Willemsen, B., Vogt, P., Krahmer, E., & Leseman, P. P. M. (2021) · Frontiers in Robotics and AI · doi:10.3389/frobt.2021.676248 · Cited by 16 · see citing works
“, 2019), and there is inconclusive evidence on the possible benefits of robots over other forms of technology (Han et al., 2008; Hyun et al., 2008; Leyzberg et al., 2012; Gordon et al., 2015; Kory Westlund et al., 2015; Zhexenova et al., 2020).”
BackgroundSocial robot advisors: effects of robot judgmental fallacies and context
Polakow, T., Laban, G., Teodorescu, A. R., Busemeyer, J. R., & Gordon, G. (2022) · Intelligent Service Robotics · doi:10.1007/s11370-022-00438-2 · Cited by 16 · see citing works
“They have been used to assist elders with cognitive and social impairments [5], to deliver psychosocial interventions [6] and support rehabilitation [7,8], as well as to assist chil-B dren in learning [2,3,9].”
MethodSelf-citationPredicting the Temporal and Social Dynamics of Curiosity in Small Group Learning
Paranjape, B., Bai, Z., & Cassell, J. (2018) · Lecture notes in computer science · doi:10.1007/978-3-319-93843-1_31 · Cited by 16 · see citing works
“asking questions, making suggestions) can elicit curiosity in a child [16].”
BackgroundExploring the Role of Social Robot Behaviors in a Creative Activity
Hu, Y., Feng, L., Mutlu, B., & Admoni, H. (2021) · Designing Interactive Systems Conference · doi:10.1145/3461778.3462116 · Cited by 15 · see citing works
“Prior research has found that social robots with affective behaviors can improve children’s second language learning [28], growth mindset development [33], and curiosity [15].”
BackgroundDigital Interactive Quantitative Curiosity Assessment Tool: Questions Worlds
Tor, N., & Gordon, G. (2020) · International Journal of Information and Education Technology · doi:10.18178/ijiet.2020.10.8.1433 · Cited by 15 · see citing works
Self-citationLearning in Summer Camp with Social Robots: A Morphological Study
Levinson, L., Gvirsman, O., Gorodesky, I. M., Perez, A., Gonen, E., & Gordon, G. (2020) · International Journal of Social Robotics · doi:10.1007/s12369-020-00689-y · Cited by 14 · see citing works
“Moreover, social robots have been used as teachers using frontal lecture mode [49], one-on-one interaction [17,48] and recently also in small groups [30,41,50].”
Self-citationA Social Robot Reading Partner for Explorative Guidance
Zhang, X., Breazeal, C., & Park, H. W. (2023) · ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) · doi:10.1145/3568162.3576968 · Cited by 14 · see citing works
“Similarly, social robots have been used to help children become more creative and curious [2, 16].”
BackgroundSelf-citationSocial robots supporting children’s learning and development: Bibliometric and visual analysis
Zhang, N., Xu, J., Zhang, X., & Wang, Y. (2023) · Education and Information Technologies · doi:10.1007/s10639-023-12362-8 · Cited by 15 · see citing works
“Specifically, the integration of social robots is significant in promoting children’s learning motivation, sustaining attention and intellectual curiosity, and facilitating knowledge comprehension and retention (Belpaeme et al., 2018; Gordon et al., 2015; Heath et al., 2017).”
Ao, Y., & Yu, Z. (2022) · Education Research International · doi:10.1155/2022/1958317 · Cited by 18 · see citing works
“Among all robots researchers got access to, only those countenances in the form of screen accomplished various emotions, including shyness, laughs, frustration, yawning, thinking, and eye-gazing [50, 55].”
BackgroundPriming, enabling and assessment of curiosity
Sher, K. B.-T., Levi-Keren, M., & Gordon, G. (2019) · Educational Technology Research and Development · doi:10.1007/s11423-019-09665-4 · Cited by 14 · see citing works
Self-citationEditorial: Robot-Assisted Learning and Education
Augello, A., Daniela, L., Gentile, M., Ifenthaler, D., & Pilato, G. (2020) · Frontiers in Robotics and AI · doi:10.3389/frobt.2020.591319 · Cited by 14 · see citing works
“, 2019) with different roles, such as smart teaching platforms, assistants, and in some cases also as companions and co-learners (Brown and Howard, 2014; Gordon et al., 2015; Pandey and Gelin, 2016; Belpaeme et al., 2018).”
BackgroundHuman Perceptions of a Curious Robot that Performs Off-Task Actions
Walker, N., Weatherwax, K., Allchin, J., Takayama, L. A., & Çakmak, M. (2020) · ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) · doi:10.1145/3319502.3374821 · Cited by 13 · see citing works
“Robots have similarly been positioned as interactive peers aimed at increasing curiosity in children by displaying curious behaviors (e.g., wondering out-loud, asking questions, expressing desire to learn) for participants to mirror or to teach themselves [16, 48].”
BackgroundInfant-inspired intrinsically motivated curious robots
Gordon, G. (2020) · Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.cobeha.2020.05.010 · Cited by 13 · see citing works
Self-citationBoosting children's creativity through creative interactions with social robots
Alves‐Oliveira, P., Arriaga, P., Hoffman, G., & Paiva, A. (2016) · ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) · doi:10.1109/hri.2016.7451871 · Cited by 13 · see citing works
Robots and AI: The Challenge to Interdisciplinary Theology
Green, E. (2018) · TSpace (University of Toronto) · Cited by 13 · see citing works
Kory-Westlund, J. M. (2023) · Routledge eBooks · doi:10.4324/9781003189978-17 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
Algorithmic Rights and Protections for Children
Ito, M., Cross, R., Dinakar, K., & Odgers, C. (2023) · The MIT Press eBooks · doi:10.7551/mitpress/13654.001.0001 · Cited by 15 · see citing works
Learning a foreign language vocabulary with a companion robot
Zinina, A., Kotov, A. A., Arinkin, N. A., & Zaidelman, L. (2022) · Cognitive Systems Research · doi:10.1016/j.cogsys.2022.10.007 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
Song, S., Baba, J., Okafuji, Y., Nakanishi, J., Yoshikawa, Y., & Ishiguro, H. (2023) · ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) · doi:10.1145/3568162.3577005 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
“These include information [8, 19], healthcare [17, 18], education [1, 5, 15], and domestic applications [12, 13, 20].”
BackgroundLong-Term Interaction with Relational SIAs
Kory-Westlund, J. M., Park, H. W., Grover, I., & Breazeal, C. (2022) · ACM eBooks · doi:10.1145/3563659.3563667 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
“…children will socially emulate the behaviors and attitudes of their social robot peer-like playmates with respect to modeling curiosity, affect, growth mindset, creativity, and linguistic expression [Kory and Breazeal 2014, Gordon et al. 2015, Kory-Westlund et al. 2017b, Park et al. 2017b, 2019].”
BackgroundSelf-citationCo-Creating With AI: How Communication Students Learn, Think, and Rely on Intelligent Systems
Lin, L. C.-S. (2025) · Journal of Educational Computing Research · doi:10.1177/07356331251385944 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
“Empirical studies reinforce this perspective, showing that AI can cultivate dispo-sitions and skills linked to creativity, such as curiosity (Gordon et al., 2015), persistence, attentiveness, and grit (Belpaeme et al., 2018).”
NaCanva: Exploring and Enabling the Nature-Inspired Creativity for Children
Yan, Z., Wu, Y., Luo, D., Zhang, C., Jin, Q., Chen, W., Wu, Y., Chen, X., Wang, G., & Mi, H. (2023) · Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1145/3604262 · Cited by 10 · see citing works
“A CST that can properly guide has been shown to be effective in enhancing children’s learning results, stimulating interest and curiosity [37], engaging attention, as well as guiding them to develop a growth mindset [67].”
BackgroundArtificial Intelligence and Social-Emotional Learning: what relationship?
Indellicato, R. (2024) · Journal of Modern Science · doi:10.13166/jms/196765 · Cited by 10 · see citing works
- Authors
- Gordon, G., Breazeal, C., & Engel, S.
- Affiliations
- MIT Media Lab (US)
- Williams College (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the Tenth Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2015-03-02
- Pages
- 91-98
- OpenAlex
- W1994475294
- Cited by
- 193
- References
- 26
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 18 · 2024: 20 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 22 · 2021: 23 · 2020: 25 · 2019: 20 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 13 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 5
- FWCI
- 21.69
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Licence
- Locations
- ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) (publishedVersion)
- DSpace@MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- Other univ. web domain
- Funders
- NSF (CCF-1138986)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Psychological and Educational Research Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Keywords
- curiosity, social robots, children, exploratory behavior, peer interaction, autonomous robots, student motivation
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