This study explores the impact of monolingual and bilingual robots in Robot-Assisted Language Learning (RALL) for non-native Swedish learners. In a within-group design, 47 participants interacted with a social robot under two conditions: a monolingual robot that communicated exclusively in Swedish and a bilingual robot capable of switching between Swedish and English. Each participant engaged in multiple role-play scenarios designed to match their language proficiency levels, and their experiences were assessed through surveys and behavioral data. The results show that the bilingual robot was generally favored by participants, leading to a more relaxed, enjoyable experience. The perceived learning was improved at the end of the experiment regardless of the condition. These findings suggest that incorporating bilingual support in language-learning robots may enhance user engagement and effectiveness, particularly for lower-proficiency learners.

In this study, we explored how conformity and trust vary in adolescent students’ interactions with a social robot. Specifically, we compared how this was influenced by whether the participants had individual or multi-party interaction with robot and whether the robot was portrayed as an adult or a child through appearance and voice. Our experiment involved 75 Swedish middle school students participating in a card sorting game with the Furhat robot, where the objective was to discuss and reach an agreement on the card sequence. The data analysis focused firstly on the participants’ willingness to rearrange cards following the robot’s suggestions and secondly their post-session subjective trust in the robot’s advice. Results indicated that individuals interacting with the robot individually were more likely to conform to its suggestions than those interacting with it together with a peer. Individuals interacting alone with the robot also showed higher post-session trust levels than those in multi-party settings, indicating group size impacts robot trustworthiness perceptions. However, the robot’s perceived age did not affect the level of conformity. Exploratory analyses also showed that mutual understanding was lower in the multi-party setting, while the child robot condition improved user experience, highlighting the complex influence of group dynamics and robot portrayal on human-robot interactions in education.

The use of social robots as a tool for language learning has been studied quite extensively recently. Although their effectiveness and comparison with other technologies are well studied, the effects of the robot's appearance and the interaction setting have received less attention. As educational robots are envisioned to appear in household or school environments, it is important to investigate how their designed persona or interaction dynamics affect learning outcomes. In such environments, children may do the activities together or alone or perform them in the presence of an adult or another child. In this regard, we have identified two novel factors to investigate: the robot's perceived age (adult or child) and the number of learners interacting with the robot simultaneously (one or two). We designed an incidental word learning card game with the Furhat robot and ran a between-subject experiment with 75 middle school participants. We investigated the interactions and effects of children's word learning outcomes, speech activity, and perception of the robot's role. The results show that children who played alone with the robot had better word retention and anthropomorphized the robot more, compared to those who played in pairs. Furthermore, unlike previous findings from human-human interactions, children did not show different behaviors in the presence of a robot designed as an adult or a child. We discuss these factors in detail and make a novel contribution to the direct comparison of collaborative versus individual learning and the new concept of the robot's age.