Effects of framing a robot as a social agent or as a machine on children's social behavior

The presentation or framing of a situation-such as how something or someone is introduced-can influence people's subsequent behavior. In this paper, we describe a study in which we manipulated how a robot was introduced, framing it as either a social agent or as a machine-like being. We asked whether framing the robot in these ways would influence young children's social behavior while playing a ten-minute game with the robot. We coded children's behavior during the robot interaction, including their speech, gaze, and various courteous, prosocial actions. We found several subtle differences in children's gaze behavior between conditions that may reflect children's perceptions of the robot's status as more, or less, of a social actor. In addition, more parents of children in the Social condition reported that their children acted less shy and more talkative with the robot that parents of children in the Machine condition. This study gives us insight into how the interaction context can influence how children think about and respond to social robots.