Therapist vibe: children's expressions of their emotions through storytelling with a chatbot

Storytelling can develop children's emotional intelligence when they are asked to freely talk about their emotions. While parents are responsible for teaching emotional intelligence, studies in using affective technologies to help people become aware of their emotions have also been explored. In this paper, we investigate the opportunity of this technology in enabling children to recognize and express their emotions. We describe a chatbot that leverages storytelling strategies to listen to children as they share emotional events they experienced, then guides them through reflective discipline to devise the next course of action. We report the types of emotions children choose to share with the chatbot, the kinds of support that the chatbot provided, the challenges during the conversation and children's perception of the chatbot. From our findings, we suggest design considerations for a conversation flow that anchors on storytelling to support child-agent interaction.

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