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The interdisciplinary nature of Child-Robot Interaction (CRI) fosters incorporating measures and methodologies from many established domains. However, when employing CRI approaches to sensitive avenues of health and wellbeing, caution is…
Social robots and conversational agents are being explored as supports for wellbeing, goal-setting, and everyday self-regulation. While prior work highlights their potential to motivate and guide users, much of the evidence relies on…
We address the problem of detecting who spoke when in child-inclusive spoken interactions i.e., automatic child-adult speaker classification. Interactions involving children are richly heterogeneous due to developmental differences. The…
Beyond mere formality, small talk plays a pivotal role in social dynamics, serving as a verbal handshake for building rapport and understanding. For conversational AI and social robots, the ability to engage in small talk enhances their…
This study examines whether engagement with social robots translates into improved human-directed social abilities in autistic children. We conducted an 8-week home-based randomized controlled trial with 40 children aged 5--9 using a…
How should a robot speak in a formal, quiet and dark, or a bright, lively and noisy environment? By designing robots to speak in a more social and ambient-appropriate manner we can improve perceived awareness and intelligence for these…
Imitation plays an important role in development, being one of the precursors of social cognition. Even though some children with autism imitate spontaneously and other children with autism can learn to imitate, the dynamics of imitation is…
As artificial intelligence (AI) advances in reasoning capabilities, most recently with the emergence of Large Reasoning Models (LRMs), understanding how children conceptualize AI's reasoning processes becomes critical for fostering AI…
This study investigates the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered, multi-role chatbots as a means to enhance learning experiences and foster engagement in computer science education. Leveraging a design-based research approach, we…
The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems into technologies used by young digital citizens raises significant privacy concerns. This study investigates these concerns through a comparative analysis of stakeholder perspectives.…
As conversational AI-based dialogue management has increasingly become a trending topic, the need for a standardized and reliable evaluation procedure grows even more pressing. The current state of affairs suggests various evaluation…
Well-being in family settings involves subtle psychological dynamics that conventional metrics often overlook. In particular, unconscious parental expectations, termed ideal parent bias, can suppress children's emotional expression and…
This study evaluates the effectiveness of child-robot interactions with the HaKsh-E social robot in India, examining both individual and group interaction settings. The research centers on game-based interactions designed to teach hand…
In this paper, we present a pilot study aiming to investigate the challenges of teaching AI and Robotics to children in low- and middle-income countries. Challenges such as the little to none experts and the limited resources in a Mexican…
The paper asserts that emulating empathy in human-robot interaction is a key component to achieve satisfying social, trustworthy, and ethical robot interaction with older people. Following comments from older adult study participants, the…
How human-like do conversational robots need to look to enable long-term human-robot conversation? One essential aspect of long-term interaction is a human's ability to adapt to the varying degrees of a conversational partner's engagement…
The effectiveness of human-robot interaction often hinges on the ability to cultivate engagement - a dynamic process of cognitive involvement that supports meaningful exchanges. Many existing definitions and models of engagement are either…
AI-assisted learning companion robots are increasingly used in early education. Many parents express concerns about content appropriateness, while they also value how AI and robots could supplement their limited skill, time, and energy to…
The development of assistive robots for social collaboration raises critical questions about responsible and inclusive design, especially when interacting with individuals from protected groups such as those with disabilities or advanced…
In task-oriented dialogues with symbiotic robots, the robot usually takes the initiative in dialogue progression and topic selection. In such robot-driven dialogue, the user's sense of participation in the dialogue is reduced because the…