Child-robot interaction during collaborative game play: Effects of age and gender on emotion and experience

In this paper we investigate how boys and girls of 8 and 12 years old experience interacting with a social robot (iCat) during collaborative game play. The iCat robot and a child collaborated together to play a simple card guessing game. Post-game questionnaires revealed that 8 year old children rated their subjective gaming experience significantly more positively than the 12 year olds. All interactions were recorded, and fragments were shown to judges in a perception experiment, which showed that 8 year olds were more expressive than 12 year olds, and that 12 year old losers were more expressive than 12 year old winners. The implications of these findings for designing child-robot interaction are discussed. Copyright the author(s) and CHISIG.