ELLA: Generative AI-Powered Social Robots for Early Language Development at Home

Abstract

Early language development shapes children's later literacy and learning, yet many families have limited access to scalable, high-quality support at home. Recent advances in generative AI make it possible for social robots to move beyond scripted interactions and engage children in adaptive, conversational activities, but it remains unclear how to design such systems for pre-schoolers and how children engage with them over time in the home. We present ELLA (Early Language Learning Agent), an autonomous, generative AI-powered social robot that supports early language development through interactive storytelling, parent-selected language targets, and scaffolded dialogue. Using a multi-phased, human-centered process, we interviewed parents (n=7) and educators (n=5) and iteratively refined ELLA through twelve in-home design workshops. We then deployed ELLA with ten children for eight days. We report design insights from in-home workshops, characterize children's engagement and behaviors during deployment, and distill design implications for generative AI-powered social robots supporting early language learning at home.

Figures (9)

• Figure 1: We present ELLA (Early Language Learning Agent), an interactive storytelling robot designed with educators and families to support early language development in children ages 4--6. The robot tells at most four stories per day upon request with a goal of teaching four target words per day determined by parents. The robot incorporates the target words into stories generated using LLMs based on the children's interests and engages the child through targeted and scaffolded interactions. This figure illustrates one sample story session from our deployment study. The children's name was replaced with pseudonyms. The target vocabulary word that the robot is trying to teach is "Sympathy" and the theme of this story is the TV show "Fancy Nancy". Greeting/farewell from different story sessions were presented to showcase different possibilities.
• Figure 2: To design a social robot to support language development in children ages 4- 6, we engaged in a three-stage design process involving: 1) online interviews; 2) in-home workshops; and 3) in-home deployment study.
• Figure 3: Pipeline for generating personalized and targeted content for interactive storytelling with ELLA. Design evolution (Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3, Phase 4) of components indicated by color.
• Figure 4: Example story and behaviors. S denotes behaviors generated with the storytelling behavior generation pipeline. The rest of the behaviors are generated using the interaction behavior generation pipeline. Child name is replaced with pseudonym.
• Figure 5: ELLA System Diagram. Design evolution (Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3, Phase 4) of components indicated by color.