Expression of Curiosity in Social Robots: Design, Perception, and Effects on Behaviour

Curiosity-the intrinsic desire for new information-can enhance learning, memory, and exploration. Therefore, understanding how to elicit curiosity can inform the design of educational technologies. In this work, we investigate how a social peer robot's verbal expression of curiosity is perceived, whether it can affect the emotional feeling and behavioural expression of curiosity in students, and how it impacts learning. In a between-subjects experiment, 30 participants played the game LinkIt!, a game we designed for teaching rock classification, with a robot verbally expressing: curiosity, curiosity plus rationale, or no curiosity. Results indicate that participants could recognize the robot's curiosity and that curious robots produced both emotional and behavioural curiosity contagion effects in participants.

[1]  Bonnie M. Muir,et al.  Trust in automation. I: Theoretical issues in the study of trust and human intervention in automated systems , 1994 .

[2]  M. Lepper,et al.  Intrinsic motivation and the process of learning: Beneficial effects of contextualization, personalization, and choice. , 1996 .

[3]  Samuel M. McClure,et al.  The Wick in the Candle of Learning , 2009, Psychological science.

[4]  Milind Tambe,et al.  A Study of Emotional Contagion with Virtual Characters , 2012, IVA.

[5]  Ana Paiva,et al.  Using Empathy to Improve Human-Robot Relationships , 2010, HRPR.

[6]  Takayuki Kanda,et al.  Can a Social Robot Stimulate Science Curiosity in Classrooms? , 2015, International Journal of Social Robotics.

[7]  G. Loewenstein.  The psychology of curiosity: A review and reinterpretation. , 1994 .

[8]  Fumihide Tanaka,et al.  Pepper learns together with children: Development of an educational application , 2015, 2015 IEEE-RAS 15th International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids).

[9]  Yen-Lin Chen,et al.  Impact of Using an Educational Robot-Based Learning System on Students’ Motivation in Elementary Education , 2014, IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies.

[10]  Zhen Bai,et al.  A New Theoretical Framework for Curiosity for Learning in Social Contexts , 2017, EC-TEL.

[11]  Ruth V. Small,et al.  Curiosity, interest and engagement in technology-pervasive learning environments: a new research agenda , 2011 .

[12]  D. Berlyne.  A theory of human curiosity. , 1954, British journal of psychology.

[13]  Brian Scassellati,et al.  No fair!! An interaction with a cheating robot , 2010, 2010 5th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI).

[14]  Aimee E. Stahl,et al.  Observing the unexpected enhances infants’ learning and exploration , 2015, Science.

[15]  Cynthia Breazeal,et al.  Can Children Catch Curiosity from a Social Robot? , 2015, 2015 10th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI).

[16]  Alan Agresti,et al.  Categorical Data Analysis , 2003 .

[17]  Brian Scassellati,et al.  The Benefits of Interactions with Physically Present Robots over Video-Displayed Agents , 2011, Int. J. Soc. Robotics.

[18]  T. Chartrand,et al.  The chameleon effect: the perception-behavior link and social interaction. , 1999, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[19]  Anind K. Dey,et al.  Why and why not explanations improve the intelligibility of context-aware intelligent systems , 2009, CHI.

[20]  Dana Kulic,et al.  A Wizard-of-Oz study of curiosity in human-robot interaction , 2017, 2017 26th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN).

[21]  Jordan Litman.  Interest and deprivation factors of epistemic curiosity , 2008 .

[22]  Timothy W. Bickmore,et al.  MAINTAINING ENGAGEMENT IN LONG-TERM INTERVENTIONS WITH RELATIONAL AGENTS , 2010, Appl. Artif. Intell..

[23]  Dana Kulic,et al.  Measurement Instruments for the Anthropomorphism, Animacy, Likeability, Perceived Intelligence, and Perceived Safety of Robots , 2009, Int. J. Soc. Robotics.

[24]  Gautam Biswas,et al.  From Design to Implementation to Practice a Learning by Teaching System: Betty’s Brain , 2016, International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education.

[25]  Koen V. Hindriks,et al.  Robot mood is contagious: effects of robot body language in the imitation game , 2014, AAMAS.

[26]  P. Pintrich,et al.  Motivation in Education: Theory, Research, and Applications , 1995 .

[27]  Gautam Biswas,et al.  LEARNING BY TEACHING: A NEW AGENT PARADIGM FOR EDUCATIONAL SOFTWARE , 2005, Appl. Artif. Intell..

[28]  Reid G. Simmons,et al.  Interactions with a moody robot , 2006, HRI '06.

[29]  Thomas G. Reio,et al.  Field Investigation of the Relationship among Adult Curiosity, Workplace Learning, and Job Performance. [and] Invited Reaction: Relationship among Adult Curiosity, Workplace Learning, and Job Performance. , 2000 .

[30]  R. J. Vallerand,et al.  Construction et validation de I'echelle de motivation en educa- tion (EME) , 1989 .

[31]  F. Tanaka,et al.  Children teach a care-receiving robot to promote their learning , 2012, J. Hum. Robot Interact..

[32]  Matthias J. Gruber,et al.  States of Curiosity Modulate Hippocampus-Dependent Learning via the Dopaminergic Circuit , 2014, Neuron.

[33]  Niko Kaciroti,et al.  Early Childhood Curiosity and Kindergarten Reading and Math Academic Achievement , 2018, Pediatric Research.

[34]  K. M. Lee,et al.  Can robots manifest personality? : An empirical test of personality recognition, social responses, and social presence in human-robot interaction , 2006 .

[35]  Evelyne F. Vallières,et al.  The Academic Motivation Scale: A Measure of Intrinsic, Extrinsic, and Amotivation in Education , 1992 .

[36]  P. Silvia,et al.  The Curiosity and Exploration Inventory-II: Development, Factor Structure, and Psychometrics. , 2009, Journal of research in personality.

[37]  Pierre-Yves Oudeyer,et al.  Intrinsic motivation, curiosity, and learning: Theory and applications in educational technologies. , 2016, Progress in brain research.

[38]  David Duran,et al.  Learning-by-teaching. Evidence and implications as a pedagogical mechanism , 2017 .

[39]  Martijn H. Vastenburg,et al.  Mood measurement with Pick-A-Mood: review of current methods and design of a pictorial self-report scale , 2016 .

[40]  E. Van Dijk,et al.  Curiosity and time: from not knowing to almost knowing , 2017, Cognition & Emotion.

[41]  Brian Scassellati,et al.  Social robots for education: A review , 2018, Science Robotics.

[42]  Brian Scassellati,et al.  The Physical Presence of a Robot Tutor Increases Cognitive Learning Gains , 2012, CogSci.

[43]  D. Klahr,et al.  Children's Scientific Curiosity: In Search of an Operational Definition of an Elusive Concept. , 2012 .

[44]  R. Brooks,et al.  Robot emotions: A functional perspective , 2004 .