Designing Playful Child-Robot Interactions for Creative Reflection in Early Childhood

Hubbard, Layne Jackson

Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

Designing Playful Child-Robot Interactions for Creative Reflection in Early Childhood Public Deposited

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Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/cc08hg69n

Abstract

Reflection is powerful. This metacognitive skill is critical to cognitive control in the developing brain, and fosters creative invention, professional expertise, and transformations in knowledge. Reflection supports both cognitive and creative development — because when we reflect, we re-examine a situation and combine information in new ways to deepen our understanding. Yet reflection, like other neurocognitive skills, is a skill that must be strengthened through practice. In this dissertation, I design robots to support creative reflection in early childhood. Young children learn best through play, and we can leverage conversational technologies to explore methods for designing expressive, creative, and reflective interactions. By visiting with children at both home and school, I iteratively design an interactive robotic object to support reflective inquiry in real-world environments. The result is a stuffed animal robot that asks young children questions to help them reflect on their creative play through storytelling. Through my work, I examine the impact of this conversational robot on young children’s creative expression, playful agency, and metacognitive reflection. Just like markers support making, blocks support building, and books support reading — I design tools to support reflection in everyday play.

To understand creative expression, I first conduct a child-robot interaction study and use qualitative techniques to analyze children’s reflective storytelling during creative play. I categorize the ways that children tell stories in response to the robot's prompts, and I develop design goals to support the diverse needs of early childhood. Next, I examine how the design of conversational agents might impact children’s agency and control in playful learning contexts. From analyzing semi-structured interviews with children and parents, I discover design strategies for child-centered agent voices, dialogues, and interactions. Finally, I investigate methods for measuring metacognitive reflection in children’s speech and language. I develop a novel coding scheme for reflection analysis, and apply that coding scheme to measure the impact of child-robot creative storytelling on metacognitive reflection in early childhood. I conclude by discussing design implications and research directions for supporting young children in creative reflection.

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