Research Project: Second Language Tutoring using Social Robots
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Contributors
Funders
ID
EC.00087
Authors
Küntay, Aylin C.
Faculty Member
Publications
Children's reliance on the non-verbal cues of a robot versus a human
(Public Library of Science, 2019) Küntay, Aylin C.; Verhagen J.; Van Den Berghe R.; Oudgenoeg-Paz O.; Leseman P.; Department of Psychology; Yes; College of Social Sciences and Humanities
Robots are used for language tutoring increasingly often, and commonly programmed to display non-verbal communicative cues such as eye gaze and pointing during robot-child interactions. With a human speaker, children rely more strongly on non-verbal cues (pointing) than on verbal cues (labeling) if these cues are in conflict. However, we do not know how children weigh the non-verbal cues of a robot. Here, we assessed whether four- to six-year-old children (i) differed in their weighing of non-verbal cues (pointing, eye gaze) and verbal cues provided by a robot versus a human; (ii) weighed non-verbal cues differently depending on whether these contrasted with a novel or familiar label; and (iii) relied differently on a robot's non-verbal cues depending on the degree to which they attributed human-like properties to the robot. The results showed that children generally followed pointing over labeling, in line with earlier research. Children did not rely more strongly on the non-verbal cues of a robot versus those of a human. Regarding pointing, children who perceived the robot as more human-like relied on pointing more strongly when it contrasted with a novel label versus a familiar label, but children who perceived the robot as less human-like did not show this difference. Regarding eye gaze, children relied more strongly on the gaze cue when it contrasted with a novel versus a familiar label, and no effect of anthropomorphism was found. Taken together, these results show no difference in the degree to which children rely on non-verbal cues of a robot versus those of a human and provide preliminary evidence that differences in anthropomorphism may interact with children's reliance on a robot's non-verbal behaviors.
Are tutor robots for everyone? the influence of attitudes, anxiety, and personality on robot-led language learning
(Springer, 2022) Göksun, Tilbe; Kanero, Junko; Koşkulu, Sümeyye; Küntay, Aylin C.; Oranç, Cansu; Kumkale, G. Tarcan; Department of Psychology; Graduate School of Social Sciences and Humanities; Yes; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES
Do some individuals benefit more from social robots than others? Using a second language (L2) vocabulary lesson as an example, this study examined how individual differences in attitudes toward robots, anxiety in learning L2, and personality traits may be related to the learning outcomes. One hundred and two native Turkish-speaking adults were taught eight English words in a one-on-one lesson either with the NAO robot (N = 51) or with a human tutor (N = 51). The results in both production and receptive language tests indicated that, following the same protocol, the two tutors are fairly comparable in teaching L2 vocabulary. Negative attitudes toward robots and anxiety in L2 learning impeded participants from learning vocabulary in the robot tutor condition whereas the personality trait of extroversion negatively predicted vocabulary learning in the human tutor condition. This study is among the first to demonstrate how individual differences can affect learning outcomes in robot-led sessions and how general attitudes toward a type of device may affect the ways humans learn using the device.
Who can benefit from robots? Effects of individual differences in robot-assisted language learning
(Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2018) Adıgüzel, Zeynep; Franko, İdil; Göksun, Tilbe; Kanero, Junko; Koşkulu, Sümeyye; Küntay, Aylin C.; Oranç, Cansu; Uluşahin, Orhun; Department of Psychology; Yes; College of Social Sciences and Humanities
It has been suggested that some individuals may benefit more from social robots than do others. Using second language (L2) as an example, the present study examined how individual differences in attitudes toward robots and personality traits may be related to learning outcomes. Preliminary results with 24 Turkish-speaking adults suggest that negative attitudes toward robots, more specifically thoughts and anxiety about the negative social impact that robots may have on the society, predicted how well adults learned L2 words from a social robot. The possible implications of the findings as well as future directions are also discussed.
Using a robot peer to encourage the production of spatial concepts in a second language
(Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), 2018) Kanero, Junko; Wallbridge, Christopher D.; van den Berghe, Rianne; Garcia, Daniel Hernandez; Lemaignan, Severin; Edmunds, Charlotte; Belpaeme, Tony; Department of Psychology; Graduate School of Social Sciences and Humanities; No; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES
We conducted a study with 25 children to investigate the effectiveness of a robot measuring and encouraging production of spatial concepts in a second language compared to a human experimenter. Productive vocabulary is often not measured in second language learning, due to the difficulty of both learning and assessing productive learning gains. We hypothesized that a robot peer may help assessing productive vocabulary. Previous studies on foreign language learning have found that robots can help to reduce language anxiety, leading to improved results. In our study we found that a robot is able to reach a similar performance to the experimenter in getting children to produce, despite the person's advantages in social ability, and discuss the extent to which a robot may be suitable for this task.
L2 vocabulary teaching by social robots: the role of gestures and on-screen cues as scaffolds
(Frontiers, 2020) Franko, İdil; Göksun, Tilbe; Kanero, Junko; Koşkulu, Sümeyye; Küntay, Aylin C.; Lira, Özlem Ece Demir; Oranç, Cansu; Department of Psychology; Graduate School of Social Sciences and Humanities; Yes; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES
Social robots are receiving an ever-increasing interest in popular media and scientific literature. Yet, empirical evaluation of the educational use of social robots remains limited. In the current paper, we focus on how different scaffolds (co-speech hand gestures vs. visual cues presented on the screen) influence the effectiveness of a robot second language (L2) tutor. In two studies, Turkish-speaking 5-year-olds (n = 72) learned English measurement terms (e.g., big, wide) either from a robot or a human tutor. We asked whether (1) the robot tutor can be as effective as the human tutor when they follow the same protocol, (2) the scaffolds differ in how they support L2 vocabulary learning, and (3) the types of hand gestures affect the effectiveness of teaching. In all conditions, children learned new L2 words equally successfully from the robot tutor and the human tutor. However, the tutors were more effective when teaching was supported by the on-screen cues that directed children's attention to the referents of target words, compared to when the tutor performed co-speech hand gestures representing the target words (i.e., iconic gestures) or pointing at the referents (i.e., deictic gestures). The types of gestures did not significantly influence learning. These findings support the potential of social robots as a supplementary tool to help young children learn language but suggest that the specifics of implementation need to be carefully considered to maximize learning gains. Broader theoretical and practical issues regarding the use of educational robots are also discussed.
