Parenting Journal · Volume 2 · Issue 5 · Licensed source edition
The Effects of Feedback on Children's Engagement and Learning Outcomes in Robot-Assisted Second Language Learning
Originally published 2020-08-04 · Frontiers in Robotics and AI
Frontiers Media SA · DOI 10.3389/frobt.2020.00101 ↗
AI / system type
Programmed, near-autonomous social robot tutor; human-assisted speech detection, not an LLM
Child-facing evidenceExamines children or child-focused systems. Transfer to everyday family life must be assessed separately.
The AI connection
A humanoid robot delivered scripted second-language instruction and manipulated feedback, using tablet responses and limited human speech detection.
Why this reading matters
Useful because its null learning difference prevents an attractive feedback feature from being mistaken for a demonstrated educational gain.
Editorial reading guide · Independence
When a robot or app praises and corrects my child, does that feedback support learning?
Separates engagement from learning in a tightly defined task. Varied feedback with a chance to retry tended to increase engagement, yet children learned similar numbers of animal words across preferred, dispreferred, and no-feedback sessions. It prompts reflection on whether feedback gives a learner useful work to do.
Study context
72 Dutch-speaking children enrolled; 56 analyzed after vocabulary exclusions and dropouts
Age / stage: 5–6 years; final mean age 5 years 6 months
Read with three questions
- What changed besides praise between the feedback conditions, including the chance to try again?
- Why did greater engagement fail to produce greater word-learning gains here?
- How might giving the child control over activity choice differ from the repetitive, fixed task used in this study?
Keep the limits in view
Only receptive vocabulary in three repetitive sessions was tested; productive language, long-term independence, and adaptive responses to engagement were absent. Feedback conditions differed on several features. The near-autonomous robot still required an experimenter to register speech, and school results do not establish a home benefit.
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Original authorship, publication date, journal and DOI are preserved. This issue’s TRICK placement and reading questions are editorial additions, not claims made by the original authors.
Mirjam de Haas; Paul Vogt; Emiel Krahmer (2020). The Effects of Feedback on Children's Engagement and Learning Outcomes in Robot-Assisted Second Language Learning Frontiers in Robotics and AI. https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2020.00101
Permissions checked against the saved article notice; repository publication notices screened 2026-11-04. This is not a new peer-review decision. The source authors and publishers are not represented as endorsing this issue.