How Neurotypical and Autistic Children Interact Nonverbally with Anthropomorphic Agents in Open-Ended Tasks

TL;DR

This paper conducted a Wizard-of-Oz study in which children were invited to interact nonverbally with 6 different embodied virtual characters displayed on a television screen, and collected 563 nonverbal behaviors produced by children.

Abstract

What nonverbal behaviors should a robot respond to? Understanding how children-both neurotypical and autistic-engage with embodied artificial agents is critical for developing inclusive and socially interactive systems. In this paper, we study "open-ended" unconstrained interactions with embodied agents, where little is known about how children behave nonverbally when given few instructions. We conducted a Wizard-of-Oz study in which children were invited to interact nonverbally with 6 different embodied virtual characters displayed on a television screen. We collected 563 (141 unique) nonverbal behaviors produced by children and compare the childre's interaction patterns with those previously reported in an adult study. We also report the presence of repetitive face and hand movements, which should be considered in the development of nonverbally interactive artificial agents.

Figures (4)

• Figure 1: Left: Physical setup of the study room. Right: 6 virtual characters used in the study.
• Figure 2: Interaction behavior counts categorized the type of interaction.
• Figure 3: Drawings created by participant 7 correspondingly during the penguin, the toilet, and the banana interactions.
• Figure 4: Repetitive behaviors observed during study.