I Remember You! Interaction With Memory For An Empathic Virtual Robotic Tutor

We present a study that investigates the effect of incorporating memory in the interaction for a virtual robotic tutor in terms of helping children achieve a pedagogical goal and the perceived likeability and empathy of the tutor. The domain is a virtual robotic tutor who is guiding and helping learners through a mobile Treasure Hunt exercise that tests their map reading skills. The contribution described in this paper is the discovery that incorporating 'memory' through utterances that recall events from previous interactions significantly increases the learner's ability to perform a pedagogical task. However, the virtual tutor with memory was perceived as less likeable and the instructions given as harder to follow than with a virtual tutor without memory. In addition, there was a significant drop in perceived empathy. This work has a large potential influence in the field of interaction design for agents as one cannot blindly add in human-like features, such as, memory that improve task performance without considering the potential detrimental effects to the perceived empathy and likeability.