The chameleon effect in education with social AI: can children learn by subconsciously mimicking a social robot?

One of the most common applications of social robotics is for education with children. Rooted in psychology theories: 1) The chameleon effect that explains how people subconsciously mimic one another 2) Imitative learning that suggests that people learn from one another by copying each other’s behaviors; in my talk I explore the effects of subconscious mimicry that children exhibit when they interact with a social robot on their learning. In a series of three studies that we conducted, children engaged in one-to-one storytelling interactions with a social robot. We generated robot behaviors that induced subconscious mimicry from the child’s side. Furthermore, we assessed creativity as the learning metric during the interaction since creativity is a crucial demanded skill in the 21st century that has been shown to plunge as children move from kindergarten to elementary school. In my talk, I further shed the light on how to make use of current technological advances such as Large Language Models (LLMs) for education. I also explore some of the challenges for the field and potential future directions.

Post Talk Link:  Click Here

Passcode: 3Vu$WV=$