A recent extension of the Computers-Are-Social-Actors (CASA) paradigm, known as the Media-Are-Social-Actors (MASA) paradigm, suggests that social cues displayed by media agents may elicit social responses from the observer. In a partial conceptual replication of an original CASA study with an additional MASA variable, we conducted a 2 (robot helpfulness: high vs. low) × 2 (presence of face: present vs absent) between-subjects experiment with 260 participants (aged 18–63, female = 214, male = 45). Neither robot helpfulness nor presence of face affected people’s reciprocal helping behavior toward the robot. Thus, our study did not support the original CASA findings. Our results underscore the need to study social cues individually and explore the purpose of these cues in (functional) human-robot relationships.

Children will increasingly encounter, and form social relationships with, social robots. Accordingly, scholars have called for transparency toward children about what social robots are and what they can(not) do to manage children's expectations of this new type of communication partner. Prior research has shown that the way adults present social robots to children can influence children's perception of, and relationship formation with, a robot. To date, however, no studies have yet investigated whether a social robot's own provision of transparent information about its (in)abilities can alter how children perceive and relate to it. To fill this gap initially, we conducted a one-factorial between-subject experiment among 276 children aged 8–10 years old. Children interacted with a robot that either provided them with information about its lack of human psychological capacities and machine status, or not. Exposure to this information decreased children's feelings of closeness toward and trust in the robot. Children's tendency to anthropomorphize the robot mediated the effects of transparency on closeness and trust, while their perception of the robot's similarity to themselves only mediated children's feelings of closeness. Our findings are discussed in light of the ongoing ethical discussion on child-robot relationships.

With social robots entering the consumer market, there is a growing need to study child-robot interaction in a domestic environment. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore children’s beliefs that underlie their intended adoption or rejection of a social robot for use in their homes. Based on a content analysis of data from 87 children, we found that hedonic beliefs (i.e., the belief that having a robot at home is pleasurable) were the most mentioned beliefs for domestic adoption of a social robot. More specifically, companionship was an often-mentioned hedonic belief. Social beliefs were rarely mentioned. If children mentioned beliefs for rejecting the robot, they often referred to family members and family composition. The findings of this exploratory study thus suggest that children’s hedonic beliefs play a central role in their intended adoption of a social robot in a domestic environment.

The increasing sophistication of social robots has intensified calls for transparency about robots’ machine nature. Initial research has suggested that providing children with information about robots’ mechanical status does not alter children's humanlike perception of, and relationship formation with, social robots. Against this background, our study experimentally investigated the effects of transparency about a robot's lack of human psychological capacities (intelligence, self-consciousness, emotionality, identity construction, social cognition) on children's perceptions of a robot and their relationship to it. Our sample consisted of 144 children aged 8 to 9 years old who interacted with the Nao robot in either a transparent or a control condition. Transparency decreased children's humanlike perception of the robot in terms of animacy, anthropomorphism, social presence, and perceived similarity. Transparency reduced child-robot relationship formation in terms of decreased trust, while children's feelings of closeness toward the robot were not affected.

Social robots have, in the case of children, rarely been studied from a uses-and-gratifications perspective. As social robots differ from more traditional media, the first aim of this study was to explore the gratifications that children seek and obtain from social robots. This was investigated in a study among 87 children. The second aim was to develop and initially validate measures for those gratifications. We studied this among a sample of 24 children. The measures for hedonic and social gratifications-obtained worked reasonably well. The measures for hedonic and informative gratifications-sought seemed problematic, whereas the others were acceptable. Our measures present a first step toward enabling future research on children's gratifications of social robots.

This study aimed to explore technological and interpersonal trust in interactions between children and social robots. Specifically, we focused on whether children distinguish between these two types of trust and whether the two constitute independent constructs or interact. Using an exploratory approach, we analyzed the explanations 87 children, aged 7 to 11 years, offered for the degree to which they indicated to trust a robot with which they had just interacted. Our results suggest that children distinguished between technological and interpersonal trust in a robot. Three main categories of answers could be identified: answers relating to technological trust, those indicating the presence of interpersonal trust, and a third category in which children referred to technological properties of robots as a reason for the existence of interpersonal trust. We discuss these findings in light of the development of child-robot relationships and the design of future child-robot interaction studies.

Previous research has suggested that robot-mediated therapy is effective in the treatment of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), but not all robots seem equally appropriate for this purpose. We investigated in an exploratory study whether a robot’s intonation (monotonous vs. normal) and bodily appearance (mechanical vs. humanized) influence the treatment outcomes of Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT) sessions for children with ASD. The children (age range 4–8 years) played puzzle games with a robot which required communication with the robot. The treatment outcomes were measured in terms of both task performance and affective states. We have found that intonation and bodily appearance have an effect on children’s affective states but not on task performance. Specifically, humanized bodily appearance leads to more positive affective states in general and a higher degree of interest in the interaction than mechanical bodily appearance. Congruence between bodily appearance and intonation triggers a higher degree of happiness in children with ASD than incongruence between these two factors.