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"Stop. I See a Conflict Happening.": A Robot Mediator for Young Children's Interpersonal Conflict Resolution

Authors:

Malte F. JungAuthors Info & Claims

HRI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction

Pages 69 - 77

https://doi.org/10.1145/3171221.3171248

Published: 26 February 2018 Publication History

Abstract

The ability to constructively resolve interpersonal conflicts is a crucial set of social skills people need to effectively work and live well together. Is it possible to design social robots to support the early development of children's interpersonal conflict resolution skills? To investigate this question, 64 (32 pairs of) children ages 3-6 years engaged in a 50-minute play session consisting of 5 activities facilitated by the robot Keepon. Children were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 conditions. In the mediation condition, Keepon directed the play session flow by indicating when and which activity to switch to, and whenever possible, signaled the onset of object possession conflicts that occurred between the pair and offered prompts for constructive conflict resolution. In the control condition, Keepon only facilitated and directed the play session and did not intervene during children's conflicts. Results show that children were more likely to resolve conflicts constructively in the mediation condition than in the control condition, and that a key function for a robot mediator within the conflict process is to successfully flag the conflict onset. Drawing from these findings, we discuss design recommendation for a robot mediator.

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Cited By

Lee TFussell S(2025)Countering Misinformation in Private Messaging Groups: Insights From a Fact-checking ChatbotProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/37011899:1(1-30)Online publication date: 10-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3701189
Levinson LCharisi VZotos CGomez RŠabanović S(2025)Let us make robots “Think in child!”: How children conceptualize fairness, inclusion, and privacy with social robotsInternational Journal of Child-Computer Interaction10.1016/j.ijcci.2024.10070643(100706)Online publication date: Mar-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcci.2024.100706
Abrams APlum LRosenthal-von der Pütten A(2025)Teaming up With Robots: Analysing Potential and Challenges with Healthcare Workers and Defining TeamworkComputers in Human Behavior: Artificial Humans10.1016/j.chbah.2025.100136(100136)Online publication date: Mar-2025
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Index Terms

"Stop. I See a Conflict Happening.": A Robot Mediator for Young Children's Interpersonal Conflict Resolution
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Interaction design
    1. Empirical studies in interaction design

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cover image ACM Conferences

HRI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction

February 2018

468 pages

ISBN:9781450349536

DOI:10.1145/3171221

General Chairs:
Takayuki Kanda
ATR, Japan
,
Selma Ŝabanović
Indiana University Bloomington, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Guy Hoffman
Cornell University, USA
,
Adriana Tapus
ENSTA-ParisTech, France

Copyright © 2018 ACM.

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 the author(s) 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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SIGAI: ACM Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence
SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction
IEEE-RAS: Robotics and Automation

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 26 February 2018

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HRI '18

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HRI '18: ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction

March 5 - 8, 2018

IL, Chicago, USA

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HRI '18 Paper Acceptance Rate 49 of 206 submissions, 24%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 268 of 1,124 submissions, 24%

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3701189
Levinson LCharisi VZotos CGomez RŠabanović S(2025)Let us make robots “Think in child!”: How children conceptualize fairness, inclusion, and privacy with social robotsInternational Journal of Child-Computer Interaction10.1016/j.ijcci.2024.10070643(100706)Online publication date: Mar-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcci.2024.100706
Abrams APlum LRosenthal-von der Pütten A(2025)Teaming up With Robots: Analysing Potential and Challenges with Healthcare Workers and Defining TeamworkComputers in Human Behavior: Artificial Humans10.1016/j.chbah.2025.100136(100136)Online publication date: Mar-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbah.2025.100136
Pennazio VCersosimo R(2024)Un laboratorio di formazione permanente per gli insegnanti sulla robotica e le metodologie didattiche per l'inclusioneEDUCATION SCIENCES AND SOCIETY10.3280/ess1-2024oa17500(95-113)Online publication date: Jun-2024
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Gillet SVázquez MAndrist SLeite ISebo S(2024)Interaction-Shaping Robotics: Robots that Influence Interactions between Other AgentsACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/3643803Online publication date: 2-Feb-2024
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Yong SCui LSuma Rosenberg EYarosh S(2024)A Change of Scenery: Transformative Insights from Retrospective VR Embodied Perspective-Taking of Conflict With a Close OtherProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642146(1-18)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
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