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The Development of an Online Research Tool to Investigate Children’s Social Bonds with Robots

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Abstract

As children are increasingly exposed to robots, it is important to learn more about the social interaction and bond that may develop between robots and children. In this paper we report the development of an interactive tool to measure children’s attitudes toward social robots for children ages 6-10. A first version of the KidSAR instrument was tested and a pilot study was carried out to evaluate and improve the design of the KidSAR (Children’s Social Attitude toward Robots) tool. The pilot study involved a small scale field experiment assessing whether children feel more social connection with a robot in a caring role compared with a role where it needed to be taken care of. The final KidSAR tool was developed after evaluation of children’s responses and observation of children using the tool.

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© 2011 ICST Institute for Computer Science, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering

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Veenstra, D.N., Evers, V. (2011). The Development of an Online Research Tool to Investigate Children’s Social Bonds with Robots. In: Lamers, M.H., Verbeek, F.J. (eds) Human-Robot Personal Relationships. HRPR 2010. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 59. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19385-9_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19385-9_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-19384-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-19385-9

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