Abstract
We present a large-scale study of a series of seven lessons designed to help young children learn English vocabulary as a foreign language using a social robot. The experiment was designed to investigate 1) the effectiveness of a social robot teaching children new words over the course of multiple interactions (supported by a tablet), 2) the added benefit of a robot's iconic gestures on word learning and retention, and 3) the effect of learning from a robot tutor accompanied by a tablet versus learning from a tablet application alone. For reasons of transparency, the research questions, hypotheses and methods were preregistered. With a sample size of 194 children, our study was statistically well-powered. Our findings demonstrate that children are able to acquire and retain English vocabulary words taught by a robot tutor to a similar extent as when they are taught by a tablet application. In addition, we found no beneficial effect of a robot's iconic gestures on learning gains.
DOI
10.1109/hri.2019.8673077
Publication Date
2019-03-01
Publication Title
2019 14th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)
Embargo Period
2021-07-07
Organisational Unit
School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics
Recommended Citation
Vogt, P., van, d., de, H., Hoffman, L., Kanero, J., Mamus, E., Montanier, J., Oranc, C., Oudgenoeg-Paz, O., Garcia, D., Papadopoulos, F., Schodde, T., Verhagen, J., Wallbridgell, C., Willemsen, B., de, W., Belpaeme, T., Goksun, T., Kopp, S., Krahmer, E., Kuntay, A., Leseman, P., & Pandey, A. (2019) 'Second Language Tutoring Using Social Robots: A Large-Scale Study', 2019 14th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), . Available at: https://doi.org/10.1109/hri.2019.8673077
