Age-related Differences in Children's Associations and Preferences for a Robot's Gender

Anara Sandygulova, Gregory M. P. O’Hare

2018

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DOI 10.1145/3173386.3177077
Data confidence 70 medium
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Abstract

In order to establish social and bonding relationships with children, robots need to be able to adapt to a variety of users of different age and gender groups in order to keep them engaged and motivated. To this end, this research examines the responses of 107 children, ages 5 to 12, who interacted with humanoid robot NAO that communicated with synthesized female and male voices. Our results show young children (ages 5 to 8) were not able to successfully attribute gender to the robot in correspondence with the synthesized voice. In addition, we explicitly investigated children»s preferences for the robot»s gender: younger children indicated their preference for a robot with a matching gender while there was no difference in preferences for a robot»s gender by older children (ages 9 to 12).