Charisi Vicky, Gomez Emilia, Mier Gonzalo, Merino Luis, Gomez Randy
Centre for Advanced Studies, Joint Research Centre, European Commission, Seville, Spain.
Music Technology Group, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain.
Front Robot AI. 2020 Feb 18;7:15. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2020.00015. eCollection 2020.
The emergence and development of cognitive strategies for the transition from exploratory actions towards intentional problem-solving in children is a key question for the understanding of the development of human cognition. Researchers in developmental psychology have studied cognitive strategies and have highlighted the catalytic role of the social environment. However, it is not yet adequately understood how this capacity emerges and develops in biological systems when they perform a problem-solving task in collaboration with a robotic social agent. This paper presents an empirical study in a human-robot interaction (HRI) setting which investigates children's problem-solving from a developmental perspective. In order to theoretically conceptualize children's developmental process of problem-solving in HRI context, we use principles based on the intuitive theory and we take into consideration existing research on executive functions with a focus on inhibitory control. We considered the paradigm of the Tower of Hanoi and we conducted an HRI behavioral experiment to evaluate task performance. We designed two types of robot interventions, "voluntary" and "turn-taking"-manipulating exclusively the timing of the intervention. Our results indicate that the children who participated in the voluntary interaction setting showed a better performance in the problem solving activity during the evaluation session despite their large variability in the frequency of self-initiated interactions with the robot. Additionally, we present a detailed description of the problem-solving trajectory for a representative single case-study, which reveals specific developmental patterns in the context of the specific task. Implications and future work are discussed regarding the development of intelligent robotic systems that allow child-initiated interaction as well as targeted and not constant robot interventions.
儿童从探索性行动向有意解决问题转变过程中认知策略的出现和发展，是理解人类认知发展的关键问题。发展心理学领域的研究人员对认知策略进行了研究，并强调了社会环境的催化作用。然而，当生物系统与机器人社交代理协作执行解决问题的任务时，这种能力在生物系统中如何出现和发展，目前尚未得到充分理解。本文展示了一项在人机交互（HRI）环境下的实证研究，该研究从发展的角度调查儿童的问题解决能力。为了从理论上概念化儿童在HRI环境下解决问题的发展过程，我们运用基于直观理论的原则，并考虑了现有的关于执行功能的研究，重点是抑制控制。我们采用了汉诺塔范式，并进行了一项HRI行为实验来评估任务表现。我们设计了两种类型的机器人干预，即“自主”和“轮流”——仅控制干预的时机。我们的结果表明，参与自主交互环境的儿童在评估环节的问题解决活动中表现更好，尽管他们与机器人自发交互的频率差异很大。此外，我们对一个具有代表性的单案例研究的问题解决轨迹进行了详细描述，揭示了在特定任务背景下的特定发展模式。讨论了关于开发允许儿童发起交互以及有针对性而非持续进行机器人干预的智能机器人系统的意义和未来工作。
