In research on human-robot interaction (HRI), the Media are Social Actors (MASA) paradigm has received increasing attention. However, MASA is less explicit about longitudinal developments in social responses to media agents. MASA posits that social signals predict social responses to media agents. We examined specifically the longitudinal relationship between perceived companionship, as a social signal, and social presence toward a social robot, as a social response. Data from five waves of a panel study among 400 children aged 8 to 9 years were used. A consistent longitudinal relationship was not found. A cross-lagged panel model showed that, over time, perceived companionship positively predicted social presence about half of the time. Social presence, generally, did not predict greater perceived companionship over time. A random-intercept cross-lagged panel model with its separation of within- and between-subject processes demonstrated no consistent over-time relations. Over-time consistency of predictions of MASA may need further research.

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.

Little is known about children's long-term acceptance of social robots; whether different types of users exist; and what reasons children have not to use a robot. Moreover, the literature is inconclusive about how the measurement of children's robot acceptance (i.e., self-report or observational) affects the findings. We relied on both self-report and observational data from a six-wave panel study among 321 children aged eight to nine, who were given a Cozmo robot to play with at home over the course of 8 weeks. Children's robot acceptance decreased over time, with the strongest drop after 2–4 weeks. Children rarely rejected the robot (i.e., they did not stop using it already prior to actual adoption). They rather discontinued its use after initial adoption or alternated between using and not using the robot. The competition of other toys and lacking motivation to play with Cozmo emerged as the strongest reasons for not using the robot. Self-report measures captured patterns of robot acceptance well but seemed suboptimal for precise assessments of robot use.

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.