Effects of praise from a social robot on task persistence in 18- to 24-month-old children

Introduction: Social robots are increasingly being integrated into children's daily lives, shaping their social interactions and learning behaviors. However, no study has empirically investigated the effect of robot-administered praise in children younger than 4 years old. Method: This study focuses on the social robot CommU, a simple, approximately 30 cm tall, child-shaped robot that exerts less social pressure and helps children attend to social cues more easily. We examined whether praise from CommU is associated with task persistence in children aged 18-24 months, in comparison with human praise. Result: Children showed greater task persistence in the Praise condition than in the No Praise condition, regardless of agent type (CommU vs. Human). In addition, children's task persistence was positively associated with the amount of time they spent looking at the agent. Discussion: These findings suggest that praise delivered by a social robot is associated with greater task persistence in children aged 18-24 months. Additionally, the positive association between task persistence and time spent looking at the agent suggests that children's social attention may contribute to sustained engagement during the task. More broadly, the results point to the possibility that social robots may be relevant to aspects of early childhood engagement, beyond the specific task-persistence behavior examined in this study.