Parenting Journal · Volume 3 · Issue 1 · Licensed source edition
Exploring the Effects of a Social Robot's Speech Entrainment and Backstory on Young Children's Emotion, Rapport, Relationship, and Learning
Originally published 2019-07-09 · Frontiers in Robotics and AI
Frontiers Media SA · DOI 10.3389/frobt.2019.00054 ↗
AI / system type
Teleoperated/Wizard-of-Oz Tega robot; speech entrainment and scripted backstory
Child-facing evidenceExamines children or child-focused systems. Transfer to everyday family life must be assessed separately.
The AI connection
Teleoperated/Wizard-of-Oz Tega robot; speech entrainment and scripted backstory. Investigates rapport, emotions and responses to a robot presented as having poor hearing.
Why this reading matters
Directly tests an important transfer question rather than assuming caring for a robot generalizes to caring for people.
Editorial reading guide · Kindness
Can a robot’s vulnerability story encourage kindness beyond the robot?
Investigates rapport, emotions and responses to a robot presented as having poor hearing.
Study context
86 children in the Boston area
Age / stage: 3–8 years
Read with three questions
- Which speech features were mirrored?
- Who interpreted children’s language and triggered robot actions?
- Did acceptance transfer to a child with a disability?
Keep the limits in view
Brief interaction, wide developmental range and missing data for some measures. Robot acceptance did not significantly transfer to acceptance of a disabled child; human operation limits autonomous-AI claims.
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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.
Jacqueline M. Kory-Westlund; Cynthia Breazeal (2019). Exploring the Effects of a Social Robot's Speech Entrainment and Backstory on Young Children's Emotion, Rapport, Relationship, and Learning Frontiers in Robotics and AI. https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2019.00054
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.