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Robotic pets in the lives of preschool children

Published: 24 April 2004 Publication History

Abstract

This study examined preschool children's reasoning about and behavioral interactions with one of the most advanced robotic pets currently on the retail market, Sony's robotic dog AIBO. Eighty children, equally divided between two age groups, 34-50 months and 58-74 months, participated in individual sessions that included play with and an interview about two artifacts: AIBO and a stuffed dog. Results showed similarities in children's reasoning about the two artifacts, but differences in their behavioral interactions. Discussion focuses on how robotic pets, as representative of an emerging technological genre in HCI, may be (a) blurring foundational ontological categories, and (b) impacting children's social and moral development. More broadly, results inform on our understanding of the human-robotic relationship.

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Friedman, B., Kahn, P. H., Jr., and Hagman, J. Hardware companions?: What online AIBO discussion forums reveal about the human-robotic relationship. Proc. of CHI 2003, ACM Press (2003), 273--280.
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Kahn, P. H., Jr., Friedman, B., Freier, N., and Severson, R. (2003). Coding manual for children's interactions with AIBO, the robotic dog - The preschool study (UW CSE Technical Report 03-04-03). Seattle, WA: University of Washington, Dept. Computer Science & Engineering.
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  • (2024)The roles of cognitive dissonance and normative reasoning in attributions of minds to robotsCognitive Research: Principles and Implications10.1186/s41235-024-00604-39:1Online publication date: 12-Dec-2024
  • (2024)Developing a Zoomorphic Robot for Animal Welfare EducationCompanion of the 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/3610978.3638360(154-156)Online publication date: 11-Mar-2024
  • (2024)Children’s animistic beliefs toward a humanoid robot and other objectsJournal of Experimental Child Psychology10.1016/j.jecp.2024.105945244(105945)Online publication date: Aug-2024
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cover image ACM Conferences
CHI EA '04: CHI '04 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
April 2004
975 pages
ISBN:1581137036
DOI:10.1145/985921
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 24 April 2004

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Author Tags

  1. AIBO
  2. children
  3. companionship
  4. ethics
  5. human values
  6. human-robotic relationship
  7. moral development
  8. robotic pets
  9. social responses to technology
  10. user conceptions
  11. value sensitive design
  12. virtual pets

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Cited By

View all
  • (2024)The roles of cognitive dissonance and normative reasoning in attributions of minds to robotsCognitive Research: Principles and Implications10.1186/s41235-024-00604-39:1Online publication date: 12-Dec-2024
  • (2024)Developing a Zoomorphic Robot for Animal Welfare EducationCompanion of the 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/3610978.3638360(154-156)Online publication date: 11-Mar-2024
  • (2024)Children’s animistic beliefs toward a humanoid robot and other objectsJournal of Experimental Child Psychology10.1016/j.jecp.2024.105945244(105945)Online publication date: Aug-2024
  • (2024)Human–Robot Companionship: Current Trends and Future AgendaInternational Journal of Social Robotics10.1007/s12369-024-01160-y16:8(1809-1860)Online publication date: 24-Jul-2024
  • (2024)Theory of Mind in Artificial Intelligence ApplicationsThe Theory of Mind Under Scrutiny10.1007/978-3-031-46742-4_23(723-750)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2024
  • (2023)Small CCI – Exploring App Evaluation with PreschoolersProceedings of the 22nd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference10.1145/3585088.3589362(94-99)Online publication date: 19-Jun-2023
  • (2023)Human's moral judgements towards different social actors: A cross‐sectional studyBritish Journal of Developmental Psychology10.1111/bjdp.1246041:4(343-357)Online publication date: 8-Aug-2023
  • (2022)Preschool children’s social and playful interactions with a play-facilitating cardboard robotInternational Journal of Child-Computer Interaction10.1016/j.ijcci.2021.10043531:COnline publication date: 1-Mar-2022
  • (2022)The Effects of Robots’ Altruistic Behaviours and Reciprocity on Human-robot TrustInternational Journal of Social Robotics10.1007/s12369-022-00899-614:8(1913-1931)Online publication date: 20-Sep-2022
  • (2022)Social robots and the risks to reciprocityAI & Society10.1007/s00146-021-01207-y37:2(479-485)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2022
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