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Estimating Children’s Social Status Through Their Interaction Activities in Classrooms with a Social Robot

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Abstract

We developed a technique to estimate children’s social status in classrooms with a social robot. Our approach observed children’s behaviors using a sensor network. We used depth cameras to track their positions and identified them with RGB cameras and exploited the presence of a social robot for the estimations. We specifically observed the children’s behavior around the robot, expecting that their interactions with it would provide clues for estimating their social status. We collected data at an actual elementary school and observed 70 fifth graders from three different classes during six lectures for each class period. Our system tracked the positions of the children 93.4% of the time and correctly identified them 65.5% of the time in crowded classrooms that held 28 students. These results were used to estimate the children’s social status. Our developed system successfully estimated the children’s social status with 71.4% accuracy.

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Notes

  1. Personality and social status are clearly different constructs (concepts) in psychology. Social status is closely connected to social preference (i.e., whether everyone likes him/her), and hence it tends to be the consequence of individual capability, such as social competence [36] or the tendency to engage in aggressive behavior [6]. For example, a child with an extroverted personality is not necessarily popular and might be perceived as annoying or aggressive if he behaves badly; a shy introverted child might be liked if she is socially competent, e.g., helpful and cooperative.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the staff and the students of the elementary school for their support. This work was in part supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP25240042, JP25280095 and JP15H05322.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ATR, 2-2-2, Hikaridai, Keihanna Science City, Kyoto, 619-0288, Japan

    Tsuyoshi Komatsubara, Masahiro Shiomi, Thomas Kaczmarek & Takayuki Kanda

  2. Osaka University, 1-3, Machikaneyama, Toyonaka, Osaka, 560-8531, Japan

    Hiroshi Ishiguro

Authors
  1. Tsuyoshi Komatsubara
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  2. Masahiro Shiomi
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  3. Thomas Kaczmarek
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  4. Takayuki Kanda
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  5. Hiroshi Ishiguro
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Correspondence to Masahiro Shiomi.

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Komatsubara, T., Shiomi, M., Kaczmarek, T. et al. Estimating Children’s Social Status Through Their Interaction Activities in Classrooms with a Social Robot. Int J of Soc Robotics 11, 35–48 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-018-0474-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-018-0474-7

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