Motivational Effects of Acknowledging Feedback from a Socially Assistive Robot

Preventing diseases of affluence is one of the major challenges for our future society. Recently, robots have been introduced as support for people on dieting or rehabilitation tasks. In our current work, we are investigating how the companionship and acknowledgement of a socially assistive robot (SAR) can influence the user to persist longer on a planking task. We conducted a 2 (acknowledgement vs. no-acknowledgment) x 2 (instructing vs. exercising together) x 1 (baseline) study with 96 subjects. We observed a motivational gain if the robot is exercising together with the user or if the robot is giving acknowledging feedback. However, we could not find an increase in motivation if the robot is showing both behaviors. We attribute the later finding to ceiling effects and discuss why we could not find an additional performance gain. Moreover, we highlight implications for SAR researchers developing robots to motivate people to extend exercising duration.

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