abstract

Public Access

"Elinor Is Talking to Me on the Screen!" Integrating Conversational Agents into Children's Television Programming

Authors:

Mark WarschauerAuthors Info & Claims

CHI EA '20: Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Pages 1 - 8

https://doi.org/10.1145/3334480.3383000

Published: 25 April 2020 Publication History

All formats PDF

Abstract

Science-oriented television and video programming can be an important source of science learning for young children. However, the educational benefits of television have long been limited by children not being able to interact with the content in a contingent way. This project leverages an intelligent conversational agent -an on-screen character capable of verbal interaction-to add social contingency into children's experience watching science videos. This conversational agent has been developed in an iterative process and embedded in a new PBS KIDS science show "Elinor Wonders Why." This Late Breaking Work presents the design of the conversational agent and reports findings from a field study that has proven feasibility of this approach. We also discuss our planned future work to examine the agent's effectiveness in enhancing children's engagement and learning.

References

[1]

Brigid Barron, Caitlin Kennedy Martin, Lori Takeuchi, and Rachel Fithian. 2009. Parents as learning partners in the development of technological fluency. (2009).

[2]

Elizabeth J Carter, Jennifer Hyde, and Jessica K Hodgins. 2017. Investigating the Effects of Interactive Features for Preschool Television Programming. In Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Interaction Design and Children. ACM, 97--106.

Digital Library

[3]

Sabrina L Connell, Alexis R Lauricella, and Ellen Wartella. 2015. Parental co-use of media technology with their young children in the USA. Journal of Children and Media 9, 1 (2015), 5--21.

[4]

Stefania Druga, Randi Williams, Cynthia Breazeal, and Mitchel Resnick. 2017. Hey Google is it OK if I eat you?: Initial explorations in child-agent interaction. In Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Interaction Design and Children. ACM, 595--600.

Digital Library

[5]

Shalom M Fisch. 2014. Children's learning from educational television: Sesame Street and beyond. Routledge.

[6]

James Paul Gee. 2005. Learning by design: Good video games as learning machines. E-learning and Digital Media 2, 1 (2005), 5--16.

[7]

Arthur C Graesser, Zhiqiang Cai, Brent Morgan, and Lijia Wang. 2017. Assessment with computer agents that engage in conversational dialogues and trialogues with learners. Computers in Human Behavior 76 (2017), 607--616.

Digital Library

[8]

Paul L Harris and Melissa A Koenig. 2006. Trust in testimony: How children learn about science and religion. Child development 77, 3 (2006), 505--524.

[9]

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Jennifer M Zosh, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, James H Gray, Michael B Robb, and Jordy Kaufman. 2015. Putting education in "educational" apps: Lessons from the science of learning. Psychological Science in the Public Interest 16, 1 (2015), 3--34.

[10]

Jacqueline Kory and Cynthia Breazeal. 2014. Storytelling with robots: Learning companions for preschool children's language development. In The 23rd IEEE international symposium on robot and human interactive communication. IEEE, 643--648.

[11]

Okhee Lee, Emily C Miller, and Rita Januszyk. 2014. Next generation science standards: All standards, all students. Journal of Science Teacher Education 25, 2 (2014), 223--233.

[12]

Silvia B Lovato, Anne Marie Piper, and Ellen A Wartella. 2019. Hey Google, Do Unicorns Exist? Conversational Agents as a Path to Answers to Children's Questions. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children. 301--313.

Digital Library

[13]

Marie-Louise Mares and Zhongdang Pan. 2013. Effects of Sesame Street: A meta-analysis of children's learning in 15 countries. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 34, 3 (2013), 140--151.

[14]

Lydia Plowman, Christine Stephen, and Joanna McPake. 2010. Supporting young children's learning with technology at home and in preschool. Research Papers in Education 25, 1 (2010), 93--113.

[15]

Victoria J Rideout and Elizabeth Hamel. 2006. The media family: Electronic media in the lives of infants, toddlers, preschoolers and their parents. Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

[16]

Noah L Schroeder, Olusola O Adesope, and Rachel Barouch Gilbert. 2013. How effective are pedagogical agents for learning? A meta-analytic review. Journal of Educational Computing Research 49, 1 (2013), 1--39.

[17]

Alex Sciuto, Arnita Saini, Jodi Forlizzi, and Jason I Hong. 2018. Hey Alexa, What's Up?: A mixed-methods studies of in-home conversational agent usage. In Proceedings of the 2018 Designing Interactive Systems Conference. ACM, 857--868.

Digital Library

[18]

Subhasree Sengupta and Radhika Garg. 2019. Impact of Voice-based Interaction on Learning Practices and Behavior of Children. In IUI Workshops.

[19]

M Silander, T Grindal, N Hupert, E Garcia, K Anderson, P Vahey, and S Pasnik. 2018. What parents talk about when they talk about learning: A national survey about young children and science. (2018).

[20]

Gabrielle A Strouse, Katherine O'Doherty, and Georgene L Troseth. 2013. Effective coviewing: Preschoolers' learning from video after a dialogic questioning intervention. Developmental psychology 49, 12 (2013), 2368.

[21]

Lori Takeuchi, Reed Stevens, and others. 2011. The new coviewing: Designing for learning through joint media engagement. In New York, NY: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop.

[22]

Stergios Tegos, Stavros Demetriadis, and Anastasios Karakostas. 2015. Promoting academically productive talk with conversational agent interventions in collaborative learning settings. Computers & Education 87 (2015), 309--325.

Digital Library

[23]

Anuj Tewari and John Canny. 2014. What did spot hide?: A question-answering game for preschool children. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 1807--1816.

Digital Library

[24]

Fuxing Wang, Wenjing Li, Richard E Mayer, and Huashan Liu. 2018. Animated pedagogical agents as aids in multimedia learning: Effects on eye-fixations during learning and learning outcomes. Journal of Educational Psychology 110, 2 (2018), 250.

[25]

Ying Xu and Mark Warschauer. 2019. Young Children's Reading and Learning with Conversational Agents. In Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, CS10.

Digital Library

Cited By

Pérez García GGarcía GCastro MCastaño MLópez-González de Quevedo MDurán RPérez LAmores JÁlvarez GLevinson LŠabanović SIvanchuk LGomez R(2024)A multi-site language study on child-robot dialoguesAdvanced Robotics10.1080/01691864.2024.238814538:19-20(1486-1500)Online publication date: 22-Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/01691864.2024.2388145
Escobar-Planas MCharisi VHupont IMartínez-Hinarejos CGómez E(2023)Towards Children-Centred Trustworthy Conversational AgentsChatbots - The AI-Driven Front-Line Services for Customers10.5772/intechopen.111484Online publication date: 13-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.111484
Pérez GGarcía GCastro MCastaño MDe Quevedo MDurán RAmores JÁlvarez GLevinson LŠabanović SGomez R(2023)Child-Robot Conversation in the Wild Wild Home: A Language Processing User Study2023 32nd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)10.1109/RO-MAN57019.2023.10309630(1436-1442)Online publication date: 28-Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/RO-MAN57019.2023.10309630
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

"Elinor Is Talking to Me on the Screen!" Integrating Conversational Agents into Children's Television Programming
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Empirical studies in HCI
    2. Interaction paradigms
      1. Natural language interfaces
2. Social and professional topics
  1. User characteristics
    1. Age
      1. Children

Recommendations

What Are You Talking To?: Understanding Children's Perceptions of Conversational Agents
CHI '20: Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Conversational agents (CAs) available in smart phones or smart speakers play an increasingly important role in young children's technological landscapes and life worlds. While a handful of studies have documented children's natural interactions with CAs, ...
“Elinor’s Talking to Me!”:Integrating Conversational AI into Children’s Narrative Science Programming
CHI '22: Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Video programs are important, accessible educational resources for young children, especially those from an under-resourced backgrounds. These programs’ potential can be amplified if children are allowed to socially interact with media characters during ...
Using conversational agents to foster young children's science learning from screen media
IDC '20: Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference: Extended Abstracts

My dissertation project leverages an intelligent conversational agent embodied in an on-screen character to add social contingency into children's science video watching experiences. This conversational agent has been developed in an iterative process ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CHI EA '20: Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 2020

4474 pages

ISBN:9781450368193

DOI:10.1145/3334480

General Chairs:
Regina Bernhaupt
Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands
,
Florian 'Floyd' Mueller
Monash University, Australia
,
David Verweij
Newcastle University, UK
,
Josh Andres
RMIT, Australia
,
Program Chairs:
Joanna McGrenere
University of British Columbia, Canada
,
Andy Cockburn
University of Canterbury, New Zealand
,
Ignacio Avellino
University of Maryland Baltimore County, USA
,
Alix Goguey
Grenoble Alpes University, France
,
Pernille Bjørn
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
,
Shengdong (Shen) Zhao
National University of Singapore, Singapore
,
Briane Paul Samson
Future University Hakodate, Japan & De La Salle University, Philippines
,
Rafal Kocielnik
University of Washington, USA

Copyright © 2020 Owner/Author.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

Sponsors

SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 25 April 2020

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Abstract

Funding Sources

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting
The National Science Foundation
The U.S. Department of Education

Conference

CHI '20

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

CHI '20: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 25 - 30, 2020

HI, Honolulu, USA

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 6,164 of 23,696 submissions, 26%

Upcoming Conference

CHI 2025

Sponsor:
sigchi

ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 26 - May 1, 2025

Yokohama , Japan

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

8
Total Citations
View Citations
865
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)300
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)41

Reflects downloads up to 25 Dec 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Pérez García GGarcía GCastro MCastaño MLópez-González de Quevedo MDurán RPérez LAmores JÁlvarez GLevinson LŠabanović SIvanchuk LGomez R(2024)A multi-site language study on child-robot dialoguesAdvanced Robotics10.1080/01691864.2024.238814538:19-20(1486-1500)Online publication date: 22-Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/01691864.2024.2388145
Escobar-Planas MCharisi VHupont IMartínez-Hinarejos CGómez E(2023)Towards Children-Centred Trustworthy Conversational AgentsChatbots - The AI-Driven Front-Line Services for Customers10.5772/intechopen.111484Online publication date: 13-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.111484
Pérez GGarcía GCastro MCastaño MDe Quevedo MDurán RAmores JÁlvarez GLevinson LŠabanović SGomez R(2023)Child-Robot Conversation in the Wild Wild Home: A Language Processing User Study2023 32nd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)10.1109/RO-MAN57019.2023.10309630(1436-1442)Online publication date: 28-Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/RO-MAN57019.2023.10309630
Tian XKumar ASolomon CCalder KKatuka GSong YCelepkolu MPezzullo LBarrett JBoyer KIsrael M(2023)AMBY: A development environment for youth to create conversational agentsInternational Journal of Child-Computer Interaction10.1016/j.ijcci.2023.10061838(100618)Online publication date: Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcci.2023.100618
Hwang DKang Y(2023)How Does Constructive Feedback in an Educational Game Sound to Children?International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction10.1016/j.ijcci.2023.10058136:COnline publication date: 1-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.ijcci.2023.100581
Dominguez XStephens A(2022)Supporting Meaningful and Equitable Early Learning Through Science and EngineeringHandbook of Research on Innovative Approaches to Early Childhood Development and School Readiness10.4018/978-1-7998-8649-5.ch018(452-467)Online publication date: 11-Feb-2022
https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-8649-5.ch018
Aliannejadi MHuibers TLandoni MMurgia EPera M(2022)The Effect of Prolonged Exposure to Online Education on a Classroom Search CompanionExperimental IR Meets Multilinguality, Multimodality, and Interaction10.1007/978-3-031-13643-6_5(62-78)Online publication date: 25-Aug-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13643-6_5
Bhatti NStelter TMcCrickard DObaid MMubin ONagai YOsawa HAbdelrahman YFjeld M(2020)The Interactive ShowProceedings of the 8th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction10.1145/3406499.3418753(221-223)Online publication date: 10-Nov-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3406499.3418753

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

HTML Format

View this article in HTML Format.

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents