Companionship with Social Chatbots by People with Learning Disabilities

This research studies the experiences of companionship to social chatbots by people with learning disabilities (LD). Due to the increased risk of loneliness and the social barriers people with LD encounter, companion chatbots could be of particular added value to their lives. To gain insight into the social meaning these relationships might have, this study adopted an inclusive approach in which an academic and a non-academic researcher with a LD collaborated. Through interviewing six people with LD, we have found that they use companion chatbots in differing ways. Such as a daily companion, an interactive diary, to find support and as an imaginary character with which they could engage in fantastical stories. The chatbot offers people with LD a way to participate in specific social interactions that are less accessible (or even impossible) to them in the real world, due to social norms and institutional realities. While the chatbot does add value to their daily lives, none of them rate the chatbot evenly valuable as relationships to real people, due to its lack of essential human characteristics. By adopting a posthumanist framework, this paper comes to understand that companionship to chatbots by people with LD should therefore be understood differently than human to human relationships. It is a way to engage in non-normative social interactions that help to address and navigate daily societal and institutional life.