Ethorobotics applied to human behaviour: can animated objects influence children's behaviour in cognitive tasks?
Section snippets
Study Subjects
Our study group included 51 pupils from two ‘CM2’ forms (i.e. 5th year primary school): 26 girls (mean ± SE = 10 years 10 months ± 4 months) and 25 boys (10 years 11 months ± 4 months). The study, performed in February–March 2012, took place in two French primary schools (Vannes: 13 girls and nine boys; Rennes: 13 girls and 16 boys).
Prior to experiments, parents completed a form in which they gave their agreement for the participation (based on video recording) of their children to this study. In this
Overall Behavioural Reactions and Performance
During this study, the children made very few sighs or positive or negative comments. Conversely, they looked at the computer very often. They often expressed self-directed behaviours, smiles, face pouts, repositioning and eye mimics (Fig. 2). The details of the behavioural and performance data (mean ± SE) are presented in Table 2, Table 3 (per child sex) and Table 4, Table 5 (per situation).
No differences between girls and boys could be found for the frequency of occurrence of behavioural
Discussion
The results of our study of children expected to perform a cognitive task in the presence of animated objects show that these objects influenced their behaviours and performance. All animated objects attracted the children's attention and obviously influenced their emotional state in a positive way. Therefore, animated objects such as robots do influence humans during cognitive tasks. However, the level and type of influence appeared to depend upon the object's appearance: 3D objects had more
Acknowledgments
The idea of this study was initiated during scientific discussions of the interdisciplinary GIS ‘Cerveau, Cognition, Société’ and EPT–MIAC programmes funded by the Université Européenne de Bretagne, directed by Philippe Blanchet and coordinated by Brigitte Le Pévédic. This study received financial support from the French Ministry of Research, the C.N.R.S. and the Brittany Region. We thank the direction and the staff of the primary schools, notably Ms Reginsi, for their logistic support. We also
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