In "A HeARTfelt Robot", we designed a social robot interaction for children age 7-11 that helped them practice their social-emotional learning competencies through guided conversations about art. Social-emotional learning (SEL) is an extremely important skill for children, particularly those in elementary school, and one that becomes more difficult to practice as kids spend more time in front of screens and less time interacting with others and self-reflecting. Social robots can help mitigate this by scaffolding emotional discussion with kids, even if teachers or parents are unavailable. Additionally, studies show that kids engage in emotional sharing with social robots.
In our interaction, kids have a guided conversation with Jibo (a social robot) about three pieces of artwork--either classified as emotional artwork (depicting emotions) or neutral artwork (not depicting any emotions). Kids discuss with Jibo what each artwork makes them feel, why, and tell a story about the last time they felt that emotion.
We found that kids reflected with more empathetic reasoning when discussing emotional art, that kids who shared more openly with the robot also engaged more with the activity, and that more vocal participants engaged more deeply with emotional art compared to neutral art. Additionally, we found that this interaction with Jibo helped alleviate discomfort caused by vulnerable sharing in kids.
This project began as a class project in MAS.630 (Affective Computing) and was published in the 33rd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (IEEE RO-MAN 2024). It also won the RSJ Pioneering Research Award in Robot and Human Interactive Communication.
Paper abstract: Social-emotional learning (SEL) skills are essential for children to develop to provide a foundation for future relational and academic success. Using art as a medium for creation or as a topic to provoke conversation is a well-known method of SEL learning. Similarly, social robots have been used to teach SEL competencies like empathy, but the combination of art and social robotics has been minimally explored. In this paper, we present a novel child-robot interaction designed to foster empathy and promote SEL competencies via a conversation about art scaffolded by a social robot. Participants (N=11, age range: 7-11) conversed with a social robot about emotional and neutral art. Analysis of video and speech data demonstrated that this interaction design successfully engaged children in the practice of SEL skills, like emotion recognition and self-awareness, and greater rates of empathetic reasoning were observed when children engaged with the robot about emotional art. This study demonstrated that art-based reflection with a social robot, particularly on emotional art, can foster empathy in children, and interactions with a social robot help alleviate discomfort when sharing deep or vulnerable emotions.