A Robotic Learning Companion that Always Tries Hard Might Lower Children ’ s Self - Efficacy in Challenging Learning Tasks

Most of the child-robot interaction research has focused on how robot’s positive affect expressions, e.g. excitement, encouragement or empathy, could assist children in educational and therapeutic context. In this paper, we explore the impact of a robotic peer learner’s emotional response toward challenging tasks and failures on children’s self-efficacy and persistence level. We present an experimental study in which children engage in a music-learning task with a robotic peer that demonstrates either a mastery persistence behavior or a coping persistence behavior. Children who interacted with the robot that had mastery persistence skill reported decreased level of self-efficacy after the interaction. Self-efficacy of children in the mastery condition changed more sensitively when the learners were faced with a difficult task than that of children in the coping condition. We conclude a robotic peer learner that always shows eagerness to “try again” and never gets frustrated or distress just as any child normally does could potentially hinder a young learner’s learning capability by reducing her motivation. We also propose to further explore how negative affect expressions of a robotic peer learner could benefit children by potentially boosting their perseverance and resilience toward challenges and failures.