The Role of Social Robots in Fostering Human Empathy: A Cross-

Cultural Exploration

By
Pedro Reynolds-Cuéllar

B.A. Linguistics
Universidad Nacional de Colombia (2007)

Submitted to the Program in Media Arts and Sciences, School of Architecture and
Planning in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science
in Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

August 2018

© 2018 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. All rights reserved.

Author_________________________________________________Pedro Reynolds-Cuéllar
Program in the Media Arts and Sciences
August 10, 2018

Certified by ___________________________________________________Cynthia Breazeal

Associate Professor of Media Arts & Sciences
Thesis Supervisor

Accepted by _____________________________________________________Tod Machover

Professor of Media Arts and Sciences
Academic Head, Program in Media Arts and Sciences
The Role of Social Robots in Fostering Human Empathy: A Cross-
Cultural Exploration

by Pedro Reynolds-Cuéllar

Submitted to the Program in Media Arts and Sciences

on August 10, 2018 in partial fulfillment of the
Requirements for the degree of
Master of Science in Media Arts and Sciences

Abstract

Empathy is a fundamental socio-emotional human ability. It allows us to regulate our

emotions in reference to other’s emotions, to understand and interpret others’
emotional states, and to act accordingly in a way that is constructive to our social
experience. Recent studies show how levels of empathy, particularly across young
populations in the United States, are on a steady decline (Konrath, O’Brien, & Hsing,
2011). Although numerous interventions to address this issue have been tested, to the
best of my knowledge, no work to date has explored the potential of social robots to
provide support in understanding and fostering human empathy among children.
In this thesis, I present the results of an experiment exploring how social robots can help
understand children's behavioral, cognitive and affective expressions of empathy. In
light of the challenge of decreasing levels of empathy, I raised the question of how
interactions with social robots can help foster empathy in children with aggressive
tendencies –a known negative correlate of empathy. I developed a novel interaction
using social robots geared towards tapping into children’s empathic models, evoking
empathy either through behavior, narratives or facial expressions. I found that empathy
interventions using robotic companions can be an efficient tool to engage children.
Through interaction with social robots, children were able to successfully perceive act
and reflect empathically across the different situations depicted by the robots. I also
found how the use of supplementary activities appear to be slightly beneficial for
children with aggressive tendencies. Although not significant, these later findings are
encouraging when considering interventions at school for children with behavioral
challenges. Understanding how robots can support children’s development and
fostering of empathy has the potential to inform future interventions leveraging this
particular technology.

Thesis Supervisor: Cynthia Breazeal

Title: Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences
The Role of Social Robots in Fostering Human Empathy: A Cross-
Cultural Exploration

by Pedro Reynolds-Cuéllar

The following people served as readers for this thesis:

Thesis Reader:______________________________________________Dr. Cynthia Breazeal

Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences
Personal Robots Group
MIT Media Lab

Thesis Reader:______________________________________________ Dr. Rosalind Picard

Professor of Media Arts and Sciences
Affective Computing Group
MIT Media Lab

Thesis Reader:_______________________________________________Dr. David DeSteno

Professor of Psychology
Social Emotions Group
Northeastern University
Table of Contents

Chapter 1 – Overview 8
1.1. Introduction 8
1.2. Research Questions and Motivation 10
1.3. Contributions 11
1.4. Overview 11
Chapter 2 – Related Work 12
2.1. Empathy in the context of Human-Robot Interaction and virtual agents 12
2.2. Technology-Oriented Empathy Interventions 14
2.3. Social Robots as Peers 14
2.4. Co-Design and Inclusive Design 15
Chapter 3. Intervention Framework & Robot Architecture 18
3.1. Intervention Framework 18
3.2. Robot platform and study technology architecture 20
Chapter 4. Pilot Study 23
4.1. Overview 23
4.2. Methods 23
4.2.1. Participants 23
4.3. Hypotheses 24
4.4. Data collection and Analysis 24
Chapter 5. Co-Design Process 30
5.1. The process of co-design 30
5.2. Co-designing with teachers and therapists 31
5.2.1. Empathy is fundamental 32

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5.2.2. Robots at schools? 33
5.2.3. Checking for learning 34
Chapter 6. Cross-Cultural Study 36
6.1. Overview 36
6.2. Methods 37
6.3. Hypotheses 38
6.4. Data collection 39
6.5. Results and Discussion 39
Chapter 7. Exploratory Study with Behaviorally-Challenged Children 51
7.1. Overview & Conditions 51
7.2. Methods 52
7.3. Study questions 52
7.4. Results and Discussion 53
Chapter 8. Conclusions & Future Work 56
8.1. Conclusions 56
8.2. Future Work 57
9. References 59
10. Appendix 68
10.1. Appendix A – Teacher Workshops Outlines 68
10.2. Appendix B – Child-Robot Interaction Script Samples (English and Spanish) 69
10.3. Appendix C – Experimenter Study Scripts 71
10.4. Appendix D – Perception Survey 71

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Chapter 1 – Overview

1.1. Introduction
Humans are social beings. Not only do we live primarily in societies, but, also, our
evolution is governed by both biological and cultural constructs (Henrich, 2015). This
cultural aspect of our evolution is built upon the human capacity of language (Pinker,
2003) and emotions (Massey, 2002). It is well-known that non-verbal communication
and emotionality play a crucial role in the social life of humans, not only in
contemporary societies but throughout our entire evolutionary cycle (Turner, 2000). One
of the human skills that sits at the foundation of how we integrate ourselves into society
is empathy (Anderson & Keltner, 2002; Eisenberg & Miller, 1987). Empathy allows us to
regulate our emotional states, to understand and interpret other’s emotions and to
respond appropriately (Vandekerckhove, von Scheve, Ismer, Jung, & Kronast, 2009).

Research from the past decade shows that levels of empathy in American populations,
particularly among youth, have consistently decreased for more than 40 years, with
recent measures showing a record low (Konrath et al., 2011). Given the important role
empathy plays in how we interact with each other, this represents an important
challenge for modern society. Social psychology research has shown a consistent
relationship between levels of empathy and racial attitudes (Finlay & Stephan, 2000),
alcohol-related aggression (Giancola, 2003), bullying (Gini, Albiero, Benelli, & Altoè,
2007), cyberbullying (Ang & Goh, 2010) and antisocial and aggressive behavior (Miller
& Eisenberg, 1982) among other factors. These studies show a corresponding
relationship between levels of empathy and human behavior. And although this relation
is not the only factor at play, it is clear that human empathy plays an important role in
human behavior.

Following this line of thinking, a large body of research has grown, particularly in the
past two decades, looking at the effects of promoting human empathy in relationship

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with the aforementioned challenges. For the purpose of the current thesis, I will delve
into the intersection of two main areas of work: empathy education and social robotics.
On the one hand, research reports interventions looking at improving levels of empathy
among clinicians and health workers (Kelm, Womer, Walter, & Feudtner, 2014) and
kindergarten students at schools (Malti, Chaparro, Zuffianò, & Colasante, 2016) among
others. These interventions have shown to be effective when deployed in long-term
scenarios and through training and educational offerings delivered by professionals at
work. Although these interventions have produced positive results, they remain
resource-intensive and difficult to scale. Programs aimed at promoting empathy in
schools through in-classroom trainings, have also shown positive results both in short-
term studies as well as long-term interventions such as Randomized Controlled Trials
(Schonert-Reichl, Smith, Zaidman-Zait, & Hertzman, 2012), or school-oriented
programs such as Start Empathy (2015). However, these programs also represent
significant challenges for schools and parents in terms of cost and professional staff
needed for implementation. Lastly, interventions looking at behavioral change in sex
offenders through empathy promotion have shown mixed results leaving limited
empirical evidence of their efficacy (Day, Casey, & Gerace, 2010).

On the other hand, research has reported social robots’ unique capability of navigating
both the physical and social world of humans (Breazeal, 2009). Currently, social robots
are capable of communicating with high expressivity (Gordon et al., 2016), provide
sufficient non-verbal cues to convey meaningful engagement (Hae Won Park,
Gelsomini, Lee, & Breazeal, 2017), detect human affect and respond accordingly (Liu,
Conn, Sarkar, & Stone, 2008) as well as effectively communicate using speech (Ishi et al.,
2008). In return, these robots are now capable of conveying enough social presence
(Heerink, Kröse, Evers, & Wielinga, 2008; K. M. Lee, Peng, Jin, & Yan, 2006) to be able to
use this feature to positively impact human behavior (Hae Won Park, Rosenberg-Kima,
Rosenberg, Gordon, & Breazeal, 2017). In particular, aspects of human learning (Hood,
Lemaignan, & Dillenbourg, 2015; Kanda, Hirano, Eaton, & Ishiguro, 2004) and health
(Breazeal, 2011; Scassellati, 2007) have drawn attention in the past decade or so.

In this thesis, I explore the intersection between these two lines of work by designing
and deploying experiments looking at potential uses of social robots for understanding
and fostering empathy among children in primary schools both in the United States and
Colombia.
Through this cross-cultural element, an analysis of the use of a pair robots as part of the
interaction, I propose a novel approach to using social robots as a tool to support and
promote human empathy. In the next section, I describe some of the most relevant work
in relationship to this goal.

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1.2. Research Questions and Motivation
In this thesis I explored aspects of how social robots can support the flourishing of
human empathy, specifically among children. In order to do so, and through an
experimental study across children’s populations in Colombia and the United States, I
used social robots to assist in understanding aspects of children's behavioral, cognitive
and physiological expressions of empathy. Using data from these three domains, I
performed analyses of children’s empathic models. By doing so, I aimed to address the
following research questions:

• How can social robots assist in understanding and fostering children's empathy?
• What can be learned from an intervention that combines behavioral, cognitive and
physiological aspects of children’s expressions of empathy?
• Can children’s behavior, understanding and physiology when interacting with social
robots predict their empathy levels?

In order to enrich the outcome of this exploration, I included data from workshops
facilitated with teachers and school therapists, considering both their knowledge and
expertise, as well as what intuitions do they have about social robots can support the
promotion of empathy skills at schools. With this in mind, I asked the following
questions:

• What effects do social robots have in children with aggressive tendencies with regards of
empathy?
• What potential do teachers and school therapists observe in social robots for the purpose of
promoting empathy at schools?

To deepen the scope of this work, I added a cross-cultural component aimed at

answering the following question:

• What are differences in expression of empathy as measured by behavioral, cognitive and

physiological expression metrics between children in Colombia and the United States?

By addressing these questions, I hope to provide a better understanding of how

empathy is expressed among children in different contexts as well as exploring how
social robots can be utilized in the context of empathy education.

This work is rooted in three main motivations. First, a personal motivation to contribute
a cross-cultural perspective into work done within the HRI field. Such a lens will only

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enhance the field by reducing the risk of overgeneralization or biased results. Second,
an observation of the potential of co-design; design done in close collaboration with
stakeholders across the board disregarding their level of education, race, gender or
socioeconomic status. Who is welcomed to the table to design and invent, in my
perspective, continues to be a difficult question to answer for researchers and designers
within the science, design and engineering fields. Lastly, a personal desire to leverage
robotic technologies to provide support to vulnerable populations, in this case,
behaviorally challenged children.

1.3. Contributions
The main contributions of this thesis are as follows. First, I designed an intervention
utilizing two social robots to explore aspects of empathy in children in elementary
schools in cross-cultural scenarios. Data and insights gathered through this platform can
be leveraged to make robots more autonomous. This in return can help solving current
issues of scalability, personalization and deployability of this technology. Second, in
collaboration with teachers and therapists at schools, I co-designed an experimental
intervention to explore ways in which social robots can be used to foster aspects of
empathy within behaviorally-challenged children at schools. Third, I drew insights from
a multimodal approach including behavioral, psychological and physiological data to
determine how children perceive and act with regards to empathy when interacting
with social robots. This knowledge can be utilized for future interventions looking at
promoting empathy; addressing the main motivation of this work. Fourth, I provided a
cross-cultural analysis of empathy across two children populations. Lastly, using these
findings, I proposed new potential directions for this line of work, pointing to key areas
of exploration.

1.4. Overview
This thesis is organized as follows: Chapter 2 discusses research done in the domains of
HRI, virtual agents and educational technologies with a focus on empathy. It also
describes the design principles that inform this work. Taken together, these constitute
the theoretical framework of this thesis. Chapter 3 explains the intervention framework
and the technology used to implement it. Chapter 4, 6 and 7, present the pilot, cross-
cultural and exploratory studies respectively. These represent the experimental
dimension of this thesis. Chapter 5, discusses the outcomes and insights from workshops
facilitated with teachers and therapists at schools both in Colombia and the United
States. Finally, Chapter 8 discusses conclusions and future work.

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Chapter 2 – Related Work

2.1. Empathy in the context of Human-Robot Interaction and virtual agents

One of the foundations of this thesis has to do with how social robots are perceived,
how children relate to them and what can be achieved through this interaction, in
particular with regards to empathy. Given that the intersection between empathy and
social robots constitutes a nascent area of research, I reviewed literature within the
virtual agents field as reference for my work. This perceptual aspect is crucial for the
consideration of robots as tools for fostering empathy since being able to convey social
presence is the basis to form a productive human-robot interaction (HRI). It is important
to consider that a large portion of the literature at the intersection between empathy and
social robotics has been developed upon this premise.

Within the HRI literature, a body of work has explored how social robots that act
empathically can change the dynamics of an interaction. For example, Leite et al. (2013)
showed how chess players who received verbal and behavioral encouragement from an
empathic robot perceived it as friendlier. Hegel et al. (2006) showed how the responses
of a robot capable of recognizing and mirroring the user’s emotional states were
perceived as more appropriate. Niculescu et al. (2013) presented a study where users
who interacted with a robot that behaved empathically, perceived the interaction as
smoother and more appealing. These three aspects namely friendliness,
appropriateness, and appeal, demonstrate how engaging this technology can be, and
how empathy can be leveraged to make interactions more compelling. This premise
holds true for work within the realm of human emotions similar to the work I propose
in this thesis. For example, Leite et al. (2015) on emotional storytelling with robots
described the effects on children’s recall and understanding of stories related to human
emotions, including empathy, when interacting with social robots. More importantly, it
highlighted the potential of using multi-robot scenarios to stimulate children’s
development of psychosocial abilities. Social robots have also been explored as
platforms to support children’s assessment of bullying, a known negative correlate of

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empathy. Bethel et al. (2016), for example, showed how, in some specific cases, children
are more likely to speak to a robot about bullying. These intriguing findings speak
about the potential of social robots as a platform for interventions looking at support
children with behavioral challenges. Lastly, studies looking at qualitative aspects of
interactions with social robots for the purpose of practicing empathy skills have drawn
valuable insights. For example, Leite et al. (2017) reported that the use of role-play
scenarios between social robots have potential to enhance the learning of empathy-
related skills . However, none of this work considers specific metrics for aspects of
behavior nor integrate physiological signals as part of their framework. This thesis
attempts to bridge this gap.

Prior to the work on Human-Robot Interaction, virtual agents were explored more
extensively with regards to their potential as platforms to support and/or promote
human empathy. The work from Bickmore and Picard (2005), and Paiva et al. (2004) on
using empathy as a mechanism to improve long-term relations with computer agents,
and the integration of empathy as a key element in the design of synthetic characters,
respectively, are examples of this body of research. This work is seminal since it showed
how humans can both perceive and project empathy onto technological devices. From a
computational perspective, work oriented towards understanding ways in which a
virtual agent can empathize. McQuiggan, et al. (2008) and Sabourin, Mott, & Lester
(2011) showed different approaches model empathy understanding algorithmically.

Interventions inspired in human behavior are also common in the virtual agents
literature. Castellano et al. (2013) presented a dialogical system (EMOTE), aimed at
studying the potential of empathic tutors in the context of education, largely inspired in
human capabilities. (Ochs et al. 2008) introduced a virtual dialog system aimed at
understanding when an agent should use empathic expressions to improve human-
machine interaction. McQuiggan & Lester (2007) introduced CARE, a system for
learning models of empathy inspired in observation of human-human social
interactions. The theme of virtual agents’ embodiment is also common within this
literature. Paiva et al. (2005) for example, explores appropriate ways for virtual agents
to convey empathy using facial expressions. McQuiggan, Rowe, & Lester (2008)
explores how empathic virtual agents modeled after human behavior can increase the
perception of presence of the agent. Paiva et al. (2005) introduces the concept of
proximity factor as a mechanism for children to identify themselves with virtual agents
they interact with, specifically in the context of education. Lastly, and particularly
relevant for this thesis, is the work of Aylett et al. (2009) considering the different
modalities required for a virtual agent to convey empathy cross-culturally.
All the aforementioned contributions have, in many ways, laid the ground for multiple
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) applications. However, there are several

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advantages and unique features that social robots add to an interaction in contrast to
virtual agents, that make them a better fit for the kind of intervention I propose in this
thesis. Aspects of embodiment, physical presence, and cooperation are particularly
relevant. Section 2.3 provides an overview of some of these advantages.

2.2. Technology-Oriented Empathy Interventions

A second component of the work proposed in this thesis, relates to the usage of
technology, more specifically, social robots, as potential tools to facilitate behavioral
change in humans. One of the motivations for this thesis has to do with the little
amount of literature at the intersection between empathy interventions and social
robotics technology. The largest body of work looking into how technology can support
the fostering of human empathy comes from domains different than social robotics. As
mentioned before, the field of virtual agents is probably the most prominent in this
regard. Newall & Hall (2005), presented work that utilizes stories enacted by virtual
empathic agents as a mechanism to pose problem-based situations to adolescents while
tracking the impact of this content in their social life. Zoll, Enz, Schaub, Aylett, & Paiva
(2006) showed the results of a cross-cultural study aimed at creating sensitization
among students around the impact of persistent aggressive behaviors towards other
students. Paiva et al. (2004) introduced a 3D virtual environment (FearNot!) using role-
playing as a mechanism for building empathy understanding. This body of research
makes evident an opportunity to connect social robotics technology with the challenge
of decreasing levels of empathy. This potential becomes even greater given the scope of
possibilities where this technology can be applied. For example, within the field of
autism research, Golan et al. (2010), introduced work that leveraged an animation series
of highly expressive and empathic toy vehicles as a mechanism to socially engage
children in Autism Spectrum Condition. Zoll et al. (2006) reported differences in
children’s perception of empathy as well as differences in bullying instances within a
program implemented in schools in the UK, Portugal, and Germany. These are all
scenarios where social robots can play a key role in exploring new and potentially more
effective applications.

2.3. Social Robots as Peers

As mentioned before, social robots provide a distinct set of advantages over virtual
agents when it comes to establishing a relationship of cooperation with a user. We know
from the literature that given the right conditions, a user is capable of perceiving a
social robot as a peer. This in return can have implications in behavioral, cognitive and/

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or affective aspects of human behavior. For example, children can perceive robots as
agents they can trust and learn from. Breazeal et al. (2016) demonstrated how children
were able to seek information and treat social robots as informants, as well as retain
information provided by them. Because my work is based on children learning from a
pair of robots, this finding is of particular interest. A more intriguing application was
presented by Gordon, Breazeal, & Engel (2015) who presented a study showing that
children scored significantly higher on curiosity scores after interacting with a curious
social robot. Also, Park, Rosenberg-Kima, et al. (2017), introduced a study
demonstrating that children who played with a robot that projected a growth mindset
attitude, as opposed to a neutral robot, tried harder when faced with challenging tasks,
and reported an increase in growth mindset. It is precisely this type of behavioral
response, applied to the learning and practice of empathy skills, what this thesis
proposes. Even research looking at more sophisticated skills has also shown interesting
results. Hood et al. (2015) and Tanaka & Matsuzoe, (2012) reported that robots acting as
peers can enhance vocabulary or writing skills. The same is true for applications in
areas such as math (H. W. Park & Howard, 2015; Wei, Hung, & Others, 2011).

With regards to social robots’ embodiment and social presence advantages, research
shows they can provide support for patients going through physical rehabilitation
(Burgar, Lum, Shor, & Machiel Van der Loos, 2000; Eriksson, Mataric, & Winstein, 2005)
as well as motivation to patients going through recovery (Jeong, 2017; Robins,
Dautenhahn, Boekhorst, & Billard, 2005). Studies have also shown the potential of social
robots in increasing levels of engagement in children with autism (Michaud & Clavet,
2001), as well as in supporting the diagnosis of people with autism spectrum disorder
(Scassellati, 2007). This fluid interaction has also been used in social robots acting as
coaches or instructors for people seeking to adopt healthier routines (Fasola & Mataric,
2010; Kidd & Breazeal, 2007) with promising results.
In this thesis I leverage the multiple social advantages of social robots and use them to
bridge identified gaps related with the application of this technology for the purpose of
fostering empathy among children.

2.4. Co-Design and Inclusive Design

Once aspect this thesis seeks to highlight, is the importance and advantages of
including a variety of stakeholders in the process of designing (Steen et al. 2011).
Looking at the body of research included in this section, it is not easy to determine how
much key stakeholders such as children’s parents, teachers, friends and other members
of a user’s social network, were included in the process of designing the reported
interventions. Although slower and sometimes cumbersome, the process of co-design

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can yield key outcomes for both the designer, the users and their surrounding networks.
For example, an intervention that seeks to improve levels of empathy in children with
aggressive tendencies at school, should ideally consider what different members of
these children’s ecosystem have to contribute. A school therapist might have valuable
insights as to what trends can be found at the root of this problem. Teachers can provide
expertise as to what are the most efficient mechanisms to engage this particular
population. Parents can add enormous value speaking about a child’s personality,
emotional history and behavior outside of school. These are all aspects that can be
leveraged to make an intervention much more efficient. With this thesis, I seek to bridge
this is a gap by enriching the outcomes of the work in collaboration with some of the
aforementioned stakeholders, as well as allowing them to be benefited throughout the
process and not only at the end.

One of the reasons why this approach to design is not widespread throughout the HCI
and HRI communities has to do with how design itself and its practice has been
conceptualized in the West. Design in its modern, occidental form, has largely been
about the designer, a phenomenon that is evident in how the history of design is traced
and reconstructed upon individuals (Margolin, 1992). Famous design schools at the
onset of design as a discipline such as Bauhaus, were erected on the central value of the
sensibility of the designer in approaching, appropriating and interpreting a given
context, as well as the materials surrounding it in order to design (Gropius, 1992). While
this perspective has been of great value for advancing the theory and practice of design
in numerous fields, it has also impacted others such as engineering, social and life
sciences in mixed ways. The implications of this individually-oriented mindset are
particularly evident in areas within engineering and the social sciences where advances
in technology and development programs have left a mixed legacy of results (Kenny &
Sandefur, 2013; Murphy, 2013; Warschauer & Ames, 2010).

Recent advances in fields such as robotics, biotechnology and computer science, have
brought to the table, once again, the discussion of how design is practiced. Ethical issues
around advanced robotics (Operto, 2011; Veruggio & Operto, 2008), governance over
gene editing techniques (Bosley et al., 2015; Knoppers & Chadwick, 2005) as well as
what has been recently called “algorithmic bias” (Bozdag, 2013; Kirkpatrick, 2016), are a
small sample of specific applications of technology where the traditional practice of
design becomes increasingly problematic. Given the speed at which intelligent
systems--some of them embodied as social robots--are starting to become ubiquitous,
social robotics starts to face similar dilemmas. Only recently, the practice of co-design--
or design made by the designer in active collaboration with the user and other
stakeholders involved--has started to make its way into social robotics. (Alves-Oliveira,
Arriaga, Paiva, & Hoffman, 2017; Arnold, Lee, & Yip, 2016; Derboven, Van Mechelen, &

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Slegers, 2015; H. R. Lee, Šabanović, Chang, & Nagata, 2017; Leong & Johnston, 2016;
McReynolds et al., 2017) provide examples of this nascent line of work.

Another aspect to keep in mind with regards to how the field of social robotics has
unfolded, has to do with inclusivity, specifically, with how research and leading
researchers are primarily clustered within developed countries as measured by
bibliometric analyses (Mejia & Kajikawa, 2017). Due to the technical complexity of
running robots in the wild, the field has been left with a limited, non-representative
sample of the population it has potential to impact. This, in return, deepens the already
broad technological gap between high and low socio-economic contexts. By including
teachers and therapists at schools in the design of the experiments and including a
cross-cultural sample from a developing country, this thesis is a small effort towards
bridging the aforementioned gaps in design and inclusivity.

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Chapter 3. Intervention Framework & Robot
Architecture

3.1. Intervention Framework

In this chapter I explain how the intervention I propose is structured, what technology
is leveraging and what is the rationale behind the design decisions that were made.
The first stage of the design process was to identify curriculum materials used as part of
interventions looking at promoting empathy particularly at schools. In Chapter 1, I
mentioned programs that developed materials with this goal in mind. I closely
reviewed two sets of materials, an empathy toolkit for the classroom designed by the
“Start Empathy” Initiative, and a series of intervention modules for the classroom
developed by the “Roots of Empathy” program (Schonert-Reichl et al., 2012). The former
set provides practical, short and contained activities, ideal for an interaction between a
child and a robot. The latter contains more elaborated activities, some of which are span
throughout longer periods of time. However, these were intentionally designed for
behavioral change. Using the practicality and efficiency of the Start Empathy activities
and the intervention-oriented dimension of the Roots of Empathy content to develop the
scripts for the robot interaction. Because the majority of this activities required simple
instructions, most of them based on dialogue and social interaction, I found that with
little personalization and, by using social robots’ affordances, this content could be
ported to the robot and personalized for both United States and Colombia children. In
order to gather teachers’ input, I designed two teacher’s workshops also inspired by
modules developed by Roots of Empathy. Later in the process, and in collaboration with
teachers, we designed two activities with that served as monitoring and evaluation
mechanisms for the exploratory study. These were based on content from the RULER
framework, a validated curriculum designed to promote emotional literacy (Castillo,
Fernández-Berrocal, & Brackett, 2013; Rivers, Brackett, Reyes, Elbertson, & Salovey,
2013). All robot scripts, experimenter scripts and workshop outlines are included in the
appendix of this thesis.

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Using these materials, I developed an interaction between a child and two-robots. This
approach to the work represents a novel contribution. As mentioned before, it brings
together materials traditionally used in the classroom to support the development of
empathy skills to a form appropriate for a social robot to facilitate. It brings together
two robots as part of the interaction allowing for the robots to model behavior while
interacting with each other instead of relying heavily on the classic child-robot
paradigm. It also provides for dynamic interactions in which multiple agents can drive
the interaction, introduce or collect information and model behavior.

A general layout of the interaction is as follows:

• Children were introduced to the two robots. They watched them interact with each other 4
times, and participated in interactions whenever the robots prompted them to do so.
• At the end of each of the four interactions, children were asked a series of questions about
how they perceived what happened, what would they change and what they learned (if
anything).
• At the end of the session, each child was given a sheet depicting each robot for them to
provide further feedback on the overall experience.

Each of the four interactions corresponded to a different experimental condition. The

core design for all the three studies presented in this thesis followed a 2x2 within subject
design, with a total of four (4) conditions. One pair of POSITIVE conditions (robot
demonstrates empathy) and a pair of NEGATIVE conditions (robot does not
demonstrate empathy1). Within both pairs there was an ACTIVE and a NON-ACTIVE
condition. The ACTIVE condition is defined as an interaction in which one of the robots
actively suggests the child to intervene with an action and provides a clear opportunity
for the child to do so. Table 1 shows the distribution of the conditions presented to each
child. This action-taken or not-taken is the first metric and will be referred throughout this
thesis as the behavior metric, used in this study to illustrate children’s empathic models.

During the interaction, video recording from a camera facing the child and a birds-eye
camera was collected. The front facing camera allowed for facial analysis using Affdex
SDK, a commercial package marketed by Affectiva, Inc. The resulting values for valence
for each child under each interaction constitute the second metric and will be referred
throughout this thesis as the physiology metric.

1For the purpose of this thesis, I define negative conditions as interactions were robots behave non-empathically and
positive conditions to interactions in which the robots behave empathically.

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 POSITIVE NEGATIVE

ACTIVE NON-ACTIVE ACTIVE NON-ACTIVE

Robots behave Robots behave Robots behave non- Robots behave non-
empathically. They empathically empathically. They empathically
provide the child with a but the child is only an provide the child with a but the child is only an
clear opportunity spectator clear opportunity spectator
to act in resonance with to act correcting the
this behavior situation
Table 1. Summary of experimental conditions used for all experiments across both Colombia and United States
samples.

Finally, video recordings also allowed me to review and further analyze the reports and
narratives provided by the children after each session in all conditions. These reports
were a response to a set of questions asked after each condition. The questions asked
were as follows:

• Describe in your own words what happened.

• Would you change what happened? If yes, how?
• What words would you use to describe the blue robot?
• What words would you use to describe the red robot?

How related children’s reports were with the content, and purpose of each condition of
the interaction, (e.g., children reporting one robot was mean/nice to the other) are the
third metric, referred in this thesis as the understanding metric.

3.2. Robot platform and study technology architecture

The robot platform used for the study was Tega, a social robot designed at the Personal
Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab (Kory Westlund et al., 2016). Tega was designed for
educational purposes and is capable of operation under multiple scenarios. With five
degrees of freedom, this 11 inches tall squash-and-stretch robot is capable of dynamic
body expressions using a principles of animation. All aspects of motor control,
communications, computation are orchestrated by an Android phone sitting on its head
while providing its screen as the robot’s face. This allows for high flexibility and
customizability with facial expression. These attributes combined with aspects of
nonverbal cues, such as prosody identification and back-channeling, allow this robot to
efficiently engage children in numerous tasks as a peer-like companion both at the lab
and in real-world settings.

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For the experiments included in this thesis, I used two Tega robots, each of them
scripted to run a semi-autonomous routine that included motion, gaze, facial gesturing,
and voice. Because of the open-ended nature of the ACTIVE conditions, I used a Wizard-
of-Oz platform to select the appropriate response to each child’s behavior from two
options depending on whether the child resonated or reacted to the robot’s behavior.
The platform also allowed me to take over the robots in case of a technical glitch. Figure
1, shows a screenshot of the Graphical User Interface (GUI) used to control the robots.

Figure 1. A Graphical User Interface for controlling each Tega. It allows controlling appropriate responses to
children’s behavior on ACTIVE conditions, as well as general control over dialogue modules. It contains general
dialogic formulas in response to open-ended speech outside the scope of the interactions.

As mentioned before, children were recorded with two cameras. One front camera that
allowed for post-analysis of video for facial analysis, and a bird’s-eye view camera that
served to monitor children’s behavior (such as determining whether or not children
took action). Lastly, during the pilot study children were wearing Empatica’s E4
wristband (Garbarino, Lai, Bender, Picard, & Tognetti, 2014). This device allows for data
collection from physiological measures, namely Electrodermal Activity (EDA) and Heart
Rate Variability (HRV). It is important to mention that due to availability and sparseness
of data, these devices were only used during the pilot stage. Figure 2 shows a layout of
one of the rooms used to run the study with a red and a blue Tega robot.

!21
Figure 2. A child listens to one of the scenarios depicted by the robots during the interaction

!22
Chapter 4. Pilot Study

4.1. Overview
I designed and ran a pilot study to experimentally validate the premise that children
will be able to perceive the robots as social agents that can act in empathic and non-
empathic ways. I was particularly interested in investigating if children would be able
to follow the behavioral model of a robot, i.e., if children would react appropriately to
each of the situations depicted by the robots. The study was comprised of three stages:

• First, a pre-assessment stage where a combination of children and parents/guardians

responded to a questionnaire.
• Second, an interaction with the robots (described in Chapter 3).
• Third, a stage where children were provided with a robot-perception questionnaire and an
open-ended questions to provide feedback and advice to the robots.

4.2. Methods

4.2.1. Participants
Children between the ages of 6-12 interacted with the robots at the MIT Media Lab.
Recruitment was done through mailing lists of local families and posts on Facebook.
Parents and guardians gave consent and children provided assent to participate in the
study. A total of 13 children participated in the study. Child participants had on average
of 1.8 siblings and a household average of 3.8 family members. The average age for
children was 8.3 years (SD: 2.0). Children interacted alone with the robots accompanied
in the room only by the experimenter. Audio and video was recorded for all of them.
However, only 9 of participants fully completed the personality tests (they skipped
several questions).

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4.3. Hypotheses
Although this experiment served as a pilot study, I formulated a series of hypotheses in
order to explore some of my research questions:

H1. Children will perceive the robots as agents capable of expressing feelings, being friendly
(or not) and telling the truth.
H2. There is a relationship between the content of the interactions, actions taken during the
ACTIVE conditions, and the signals coming from valence.
H3. Children will correctly identify POSITIVE and NEGATIVE conditions in both
ACTIVE and NON-ACTIVE variations.

I expected all three questions to be answered positively in order to validate the

effectiveness of the interaction scenario with the social robots. This assumption is built
on research on the relationship between levels of empathy and prosocial behavior (H3)
(Eisenberg & Fabes, 1990; Eisenberg & Miller, 1987; Hoffman, 2008) and literature
linking facial expressions with empathy (Dimberg, Andréasson, & Thunberg, 2011;
Eisenberg & Fabes, 1990; Lamm, Porges, Cacioppo, & Decety, 2008). In order to explore
results of the perceptual dimension (H1) I used metrics introduced by Druga, Williams,
Breazeal, & Resnick (2017). I complemented these metrics using a mixed-methods
approach where I expected children who did not report through narratives their
perception of the interaction to do so using the cards given to them at the end of the
experiment. These notes are reported in Chapter 6.

4.4. Data collection and Analysis

Data collection was divided into three stages according to different moments
throughout the experiment. 1) Pre-assessment; 2) Interactions with the robots, and; 3)
Post-assessment activities.

4.4.1. Pre-intervention
To get a baseline measurement of each child’s level of empathy and build a personality
profile, children completed pre-tests including an adapted and validated version of the
Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) (Litvack-Miller, McDougall, & Romney, 1997) which
is the gold standard for measuring empathy. Along with this test, each child took a
child-friendly and validated version of the Five Factor Inventory Questionnaire (Big
Five) (Maćkiewicz & Cieciuch, 2016) in order to determine aspects of their personality.
We complemented this with a short survey provided to parents who accompanied

!24
children. The survey included demographic questions from the child and his/her
family, as well as prompts asking for descriptions of the child’s personality.

4.4.2. Intervention
After children finished filling out the questionnaires, they were invited to join the
human experimenter in a room where they could interact with the robots. The rest of
this stage of the study was carried out following the guidelines presented in section 3.1
of Chapter 3.

4.4.3. Post-intervention
After each interaction, each child was handed two cards depicting each of the robots for
them to write messages, commentary or advice for each robot separately. Once they
finished this activity, children were asked to fill out a short survey on their perception of
the robots. This survey asked questions about how and if the child perceived the robot
as a truthful, affective and friendly agent. Post-study, videos were coded for behavior
taken by the child during all four conditions and analyzed for facial features and
narratives and reports provided by children. Surveys used are included in the appendix
section.

4.4.4. Data Analysis

Data collected pre-interaction was later used to inform conversations with teachers and
therapists. Data collected during the intervention was used to determine both behavior
and physiology metrics. As mentioned before, the behavior metric was established
according to how appropriate/correct each child’s reaction was to the ACTIVE
conditions. I reported the physiology metric based on the valence values provided by the
Affdex measurements. These values are reported as values ranging from -100 to 100
where values between -100 and 0 correspond to negative to neutral and 0 to 100 to
neutral to positive expressions. Due to the variability of valence values (e.g. frequent
null results, extreme scores, rapid changes in values), I applied a median filter to the
data over a window of 20 frames and only for values different than zero or null results. I
report the mean computed over the final values obtained after filtering the signal.

Lastly, I report aggregated results from the perception survey answered by children
during the post-intervention stage. The survey uses an adaptation of the questionnaires
used in Druga, Williams, Breazeal, & Resnick (2017) to investigate how children discern
behavior when presented with different intelligent agents.

!25
4.5. Results and Discussion
Measures from behavior, physiology and understanding were collected from all children.
During the collection of metrics of understanding, two (2) children didn’t answer the
questions for the POSITIVE-ACTIVE condition and one (1) child didn’t answer to the
questions for the POSITIVE NON-ACTIVE condition.

With regards to the behavior metric, I found that 3 out of 13 children (23%) acted
appropriately during the POSITIVE-ACTIVE condition and 4 out of 13 children (30%)
during the NEGATIVE-ACTIVE condition. In relation to the understanding metric, 8 out
of 11 children (72%) provided reports consistent with the POSITIVE-ACTIVE condition,
and 11 out of 13 children (85%) were consistent in identifying the NEGATIVE-ACTIVE
condition. This is an intriguing finding showing a dissonance between children’s
cognitive understanding of an empathic situation and their corresponding behavior
when asked to act upon it.

Because the age range of children included in the sample varied significantly (6-12 years
old), I analyzed these results breaking the sample between children under 8 years old (5
children) and children 8 years old and older (8 children). Using this distribution, I found
that all the children who both identified (understanding) and reacted (behavior)
appropriately to interactions in both the POSITIVE-ACTIVE and NEGATIVE-ACTIVE
conditions were above 8 years old (3 children). I hypothesize that children’s cognitive
and emotional development plays a role in how children connect empathic
understanding and behavior. To complement the understanding metric, I analyzed
children’s understanding of NON-ACTIVE conditions. I found that 8 out of 12 (66%)
and 9 out of 13 (69%) children correctly identified the POSITIVE and NEGATIVE
conditions respectively. Taken together, these results are indicative of support for H3.

With regards to the physiology metric, valence values for the POSITIVE-ACTIVE and
NEGATIVE-ACTIVE conditions were 15.09 and -18.74 respectively. As mentioned
before, valence values range from -100 to 100 with 0 as the neutral value. These results
show a trend close to neutrality but correspondent with the emotional direction of the
interaction (negative or positive). Although more data is needed in order to expand this
analysis, we can take these results as indication of H2 or a potential relationship
between interaction content and valence values.

Finally, at the end of the session, children answered questions related to their perception
of the robots. In accordance to the results of Druga, Williams, Breazeal, & Resnick
(2017), children consistently assigned emotional features to the robot. Figure 3 shows
the distribution of the answers for 13 children. Children perceived robots as having

!26
feelings, being friendly, and telling the truth. Interestingly, 6 out of 13 children (46%) did
not perceive the robot as being smarter than them. I again looked at these results
dividing the group by age, and found that from these 6 children only one (1) was older
than 8 years old. Altogether, these results support H1 confirming that children in fact
perceive social robots, specifically in the context of this intervention, as emotional and
affective agents.

Figure 3. Aggregated results to the robot perception survey, USA sample. N = 13. “BR” (blue robot), “RR” (red
robot), “Rs” (robots).

Two of the main dimensions of empathy as defined by (Mark H. Davis, 1980), include
Empathic Concern, or the capability to have an emotional reaction to someone else's
misfortunes, and Perspective Taking, or the ability to situate ourselves in someone else's
point of view. The content of the intervention, and the interactions facilitated by the
robot tap into these specific aspects. Based on the results from behavior, physiology and
understanding metrics, the intervention appears to be a feasible medium to elicit both of
these aspects of empathy in children. From a behavioral perspective, children
consistently identified situations in which a robot was in need of empathy and in

!27
several cases were able to model their behavioral response based on that understanding.
This finding supports H3 by showing the potential of social robots as agents for both
reflection and behavioral change in children.

As an exploration into how these variables correlate with the main empathy metrics
taken prior to the experiment through the IRI instrument (Empathic Concern and
Perspective Taking), I performed a correlation analysis over the sample to investigate
interactions among variables of interest in relation to each empathy metric (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Correlation
charts for both Empathic
Concern and Perspective
Taking for the United
States sample. Valence
values were aggregated
from both NEGATIVE and
POSITIVE conditions and
collated into one metric of
emotional expressivity.

!28
Due to the small sample size , there is no clear evidence of strong correlations. More
data needs to be collected in order to further investigate interactions.

With regards of the data collection process, aspects of the protocol used in this pilot
study were further improved. First, in providing surveys to children, it became evident
that not all participants were able to proficiently respond to all questions. Second, the
POSITIVE ACTIVE condition requires the child to touch one of the robots. In the layout
of the study, robots were located somewhat far from children. This proximity factor may
have influenced children’s behavior. Lastly, narrowing the subjects age range can
further provide granularity in the results while offering a much better understanding of
how these relate to children’s emotional stages of development for example.

!29
Chapter 5. Co-Design Process

5.1. The process of co-design

As mentioned in the theoretical framework of this thesis, one of the purposes of this
work is to add to the growing practice of co-design within social robotics. Particularly
when it comes to designing at schools, it is regular practice for new programs and
interventions to arrive without explicit feedback or input from teachers. In developed
countries, where systems tend to be more robust, trust over public institutions is high,
as well as the quality of teachers, it is for staff at schools to take on new programs
involving the use of new technologies. However, this approach to educational change
brings with it the risk of teachers and school staff in general to feel disenfranchised or
frustrated with programs that are not responding to their specific needs.

In order to avoid this risk, and mindful that the intervention I propose walks a sensitive
line (it includes children profiled as aggressive), I decided to bring teachers and
therapists who work at schools to the table to innovate along with me. While it’s true
that co-design in general is a slower mechanism for design, it provides improvements in
outcomes beyond the scope of the task at hand. For example, during the co-design stage
of this work, I learned about the politics involved in deploying programs in areas which
are not considered by the national/state curriculum as “core” (e.g., programs on
emotional intelligence). I was also privileged to watch how teachers and therapists in
the United States team up to keep up with students who might be at risk even when
these tasks are outside their scope of work. I also learned how teachers are, in fact, eager
to see programs that look into children’s emotional development but are afraid the
workload of implementing these programs will fall primarily on their shoulders. This is
why some of them see technology as a way to possibly augment the work that they
currently do. More importantly, I was able to learn about the many ideas and
opportunities that teachers both in Colombia and the United States identified to provide
support to students in order for them to emotionally flourish. Some of these ideas were
captured and integrated into the cross-cultural study and others reported in the

!30
following section. For example, therapists in one of the schools in Colombia suggested
how, through its customizable but constant positive reinforcement, a robot could
contribute in providing a sense of stability and confidence for children struggling at
home.

T. P009: If you can tell the robot to say positive things to the child all the time, well, the child
is going to feel like there is a relationship in his life that is constant. These kids have a lot of
problems in their home […] many changes. That will be of great help.

One teacher suggested that, given how easy children found interacting with the robot
and how much they disclosed, robots could make it easier for parents and staff at school
to talk to children about difficult topics.

T. P008: Well, the truth is that these kids talked a lot to that robot and if he [the robot] helps
them to talk and it listens, well, maybe the robot can speak to them about difficult things,
hard topics and help them with that 2.

Key aspects of the design of the cross-cultural and exploratory studies described in
Chapter 6 and 7 of this thesis, are a direct result of the insight and feedback provided by
these stakeholders. Nevertheless, even though the present work combines input from
key stakeholders, it is crucial to include more for future iterations. Parents, friends and
the students themselves, should also be part of the co-design process for these types of
interventions.

5.2. Co-designing with teachers and therapists

I chose to work with teachers and therapists because both of them play a crucial role for
children at school by continuously assessing and supporting them throughout their
cognitive, social and emotional development. This aspect of their work allows them to
have a unique perspective with regards to what strategies might be effective when
working with children. As part of the design process of this experiment, I took
advantage of this unique wealth of knowledge by bringing them to the table to discuss
how my approach to the issue of empathy decline could be implemented at schools.
Through a series of workshops in both the United States and Colombia, I was able to
tap into their expertise and make modifications to the experiments.

2 Translations are mine

!31
Workshops were implemented after the pilot study, and in the case of Colombia, right
after the cross-cultural study. The layout of the workshop was divided into two
sessions. Specific goals for these workshops included:

• Introduce fundamental aspects of empathy, specifically in relationship with the benefits of

empathy for prosocial behavior as well as ways in which empathy can be fostered within
schools.
• Present examples of how social robots can support human growth in different areas of our
development, and specifically with regards to empathy.
• Present the results observed in the pilot study and receive feedback.
• Facilitate an exploration of how to use social robots for the purpose of fostering empathy
within children.

In session number one, participants were introduced to the issue of declining empathy
in the United States, its potential lasting effects, as well as a survey of interventions
currently used in classrooms in order to counteract this trend. They were also
introduced to the field of social robotics, its potential and examples where social robots
provide support, enhance or complement human development -- particularly children.

Lastly, they were presented with a social robot for them to experience first-hand some of
the possibilities and limitations of this technology. Full outlines for these workshops can
be found on Appendix A. Below, I have summarized the main themes that surfaced
during these workshops which constitute the answer to my research question: What
potential do teachers and school therapists observe in social robots for the purpose of promoting
empathy at schools?

5.2.1. Empathy is fundamental

The first theme that emerged was a validation of how important empathy is for staff at
schools. In all three schools, two in Colombia and one in the United States, teachers and
therapists remarked on the need to intentionally integrate activities that promote
empathy skills. In the case of the United States, some schools currently have an
emotional intelligence program, but these are not required directly by the state of
Massachusetts. The state does have a Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) program
including guidelines for how to implement it. However, this framework has

!32
not been formally included into the curriculum framework. It is worth noting that the
webpage3 of the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Schools mentions
SEL guidelines were included into the “revised learning standards in math and in English
language arts and literacy” as of 2017.

Figure 5. Teacher,
therapist and
students at a school
in Colombia.

5.2.2. Robots at schools?

The second big theme that arose in the workshops was the question for the feasibility
and relevance of social robots at schools. In the case of the United States and, given the
context of a school located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, there is a wide acceptance and
understanding of how this technology can benefit and play a role in augmenting their
work.

Some teachers in the Colombia group, however, reported both skepticism and lack of
understanding as to how social robots could serve them as a tool. Nine out of twelve
participants mentioned not being interested in using this technology. When asked why,
all of them mentioned the importance of human connection in the face of the socio-

3 http://www.doe.mass.edu/candi/SEL/

!33
political situation of the country4. Another question systematically reported during
these workshops has to do with the affordability of the technology and the technical
know-how in order to efficiently implement it at schools. Teachers shared numerous
stories of educational technology projects ran at schools which were latter cancelled or
failed based on this factor. Colombian teachers reported this as an insurmountable
obstacle for their schools to integrate this technology. For example:

T. P010: “If we aren’t able to afford programs to bring empathy or emotional intelligence
content into our schools, how could we afford buying robots?”

Despite these reservations, when teachers were asked about the perceived potential of
this technology and the proposed intervention, 11 out of 12 teachers mentioned it could
be of great help. For example:

T. P002: “[...] Children like the robots. So if they like them, and the robot can help them
practice these skills, they could be of great help.”

5.2.3. Checking for learning

During the co-design activity in session 2 of the workshop, teachers had the
opportunity to propose ways in which the robot could be used at schools to promote
empathy skills. They were also presented with videos and results from the pilot study
in order to provide feedback and input in re-designing interactions. A large number of
the suggestions presented by teachers were related to aspects of learning or assessing of
learning. For example:

T. P002: “The robot could listen to questions or problems students have and tell them what
they can do to improve.”

T. P005: “Children can use the robot as an extra teacher that teaches them about empathy.
They could learn a lot.”

T. P011: “Students could take tests with the robot. We will give questions to the robot for
each child, and the robot can support us in helping that child.”

With regards to the interaction used in the pilot study, teachers reported the activity
lacked mechanisms to intentionally teach, check for prior understanding, or assess

4Colombia has recently signed a peace agreement after more than 50 years of internal conflict and is undergoing a
country-wide process of reconciliation.

!34
learning in children. Some of the recommendations teachers provided to fix that
included:

• Running students through a series of activities where either the robot or a therapist would
teach children key concepts about empathy and provide clear examples in the context of the
school or the home.
• Include written assessments for students to fill out after the robot interaction.

Participants in the Colombia sample (in particular, those teaching at low-SES schools)
remarked on the importance of making sure children were learning and not only seeing
the time with the robot as play. Some of them even remarked that using these strategies
would be the only reliable way to verify if the child was actually learning. Teachers in
the United States and in the high-SES Colombia sample, expressed being more open
and flexible as to how activities with the robot would play out. This opinion can be seen
as a reflection of differences in teacher preparedness and a consideration of learning as a
goal that can be achieved through playful activities.

!35
Chapter 6. Cross-Cultural Study

6.1. Overview
Using learnings from the pilot study, I iterated and expanded the scope to create a new
study that included a cross-cultural element. Specifically, I included two samples of
children from a different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. The results and
discussion in sub-section 6.5 include analysis -- looking at both the pilot and cross-
cultural children’s samples.

I was interested in exploring differences in children’s perceptions of the robots, as well

as validating trends found in my pilot study with regards of the behavioral, understanding
and physiology effects of the intervention. Also, based on insights from teachers
workshops, I wanted to explore more concretely what learning children were drawing
from the experience.

The general layout of the interaction and the technical platform for this study remained
the same as the ones used in the pilot study. Instruments used to measure behavior,
empathy and physiological aspects also remained the same. I made minor changes in
the setup of the experiment and in the content provided by the robot. I also added a co-
design component by actively including therapists and teachers at schools both in the
United States and Colombia into the process of designing experiments. I was interested
in including a sample from Colombia given its recent history of violence after a more
than 50 year long internal conflict. There is evidence showing that suffering and past
adversity make people more prone to acting empathically (Lim and DeSteno 2016;
Staub and Vollhardt 2008; Vollhardt and Staub 2011; Stellar et al. 2012). One of the
motivations with this cross-cultural study has to do with studying if these differences
can be found between across our samples. New questions following the interactions
with the robot were added based on feedback collected through workshops with
teachers and therapists. Also, based on the analyses from the pilot study, I narrowed the
age bracket of children to be included in the sample to children ages 8-12. Finally, all
instruments were translated into Spanish.

!36
6.2. Methods

6.2.1. Participants
I recruited 27 children between the ages 8-12 from two schools in the Bogotá, Colombia
metropolitan area. All children were attending elementary school between the 4th and
5th grade. The average age of the children was 10.3 years old (SD: 0.78). The age
distribution was as follows: 3 children age 9, 14 age 10, 8 age 11, and 2 age 12
respectively. Fifteen children were male and twelve were female. Sixteen children
belonged to a low SES and ten to high SES as measured by the city’s neighborhood
classification (based on the most recent census available data in 2005). All children were
Spanish native speakers. Parents and guardians gave consent and children provided
assent to participate in the study and filled demographic sheets. Parents did not
accompany their child to the experiment since the study was ran at schools. Later
verification of demographic data was done with the help of school staff.

Children interacted with the robots at their respective schools in a room accompanied
only by the experimenter. Audio and video was recorded for all participants. All
children fully completed all tests and took part in the interaction. Recruitment was done
through both public and private schools’ networks mailing. Children had an average of
1.9 siblings and a household average of 3.8 family members.

6.2.2. Intervention
All materials of the intervention -- including experimenter scripts, robot dialog, surveys
and assessment materials -- were translated into Spanish. The experimenter introduced
the robots to each child using the same instructions as in the pilot study. Full scripts are
included in Appendix C.

Once each child had filled the personality and empathy tests, the experimenter invited
them to sit on a table where the robots were ready for the interaction. The layout of the
experiment followed the guidelines stated in the Intervention Framework, section 3.1. At
the end of the interaction, children were provided with the perception survey and with
sheets for them to provide further feedback, same as in the pilot study.

Based on therapists and teachers’ workshops, I included some minor modifications to

the questions following each experimental condition. The updated list, as well as the
reasoning behind its modification is as follows:

• Describe in your own words what happened.

• Would you change what happened? If yes, how?

!37
 • Do you have any advice for any of the robots?
Rationale: Since there wasn’t any particular metric looking at differences in
perception between each robot, teachers suggested that in order to cast a wider net
of feedback from students, questions should be about both robots.
• If you could change something about what happened, what would that be?
Did you learn something about what happened? If yes, what did you learn?
As mentioned in the previous section, teachers give significant value to knowing
that children are actually learning. Because a key aspect of the intervention is the
modeling of empathy (or lack of empathy) by the robots, both teachers and
therapists thought it would be highly beneficial to check what children were
making out of the intervention.
• If you could teach others about what you experienced today, what would you teach them?
Another common theme, particularly with therapists, was the need for activities
that promote skills that can later be checked for transfer into other dimensions of
children behavior. For example, if a child is learning about empathic responses
with a robot in distress, they would like to see this learning transferred into
empathy with other children. Given that the current study is not longitudinal, one
way that was suggested by teachers in order to check for transfer priors, was to
ask children what they would teach others from what they learned during the
intervention.

6.2.3. Conditions
This study utilized the same set of conditions as the pilot study. Although new
conditions or variations of current ones were proposed by teachers and therapists, these
were not included. The reason behind this decision had to do with consistency of data
for later comparisons between children populations in the United States and Colombia.

6.3. Hypotheses
Based on the findings from the pilot study, I expanded the hypotheses for this
experiment to formulate the following hypotheses:

H1. Metrics of behavior, understanding and physiology in children during interactions with
the robot can serve as a predictor of empathy levels as measured by the IRI.
H2. There are significant differences on metrics of empathy, behavior, understanding and
physiology between children in the United States and Colombia.

!38
 H3. There are significant differences between the United States and Colombian children with
regards to how they perceive the robots.
H4. Children will consistently report empathy-related learnings associated with the content
of the interaction.

Although correlations between levels of empathy and prosocial behavior have been
previously established in the literature (M. H. Davis, 2015; Eisenberg & Fabes, 1990;
Eisenberg & Miller, 1987; Hoffman, 2008), to the best of my knowledge, no multimodal
approaches combining behavioral, physiological and psychological data have been
proposed. A positive answer to H1, H2 and H4 will provide support to this
contribution. Exploration of data from H4 will provide early evidence addressing the
question of how can social robots support the fostering of human empathy. H2 will add
to the body of research around socially-oriented interventions within the social robotics
field.

6.4. Data collection

Data collection was divided into the same three stages as the pilot study: pre-
intervention, intervention and post-intervention, and it used the same instruments and
metrics as the pilot study. During this experiment I was not able to collect EDA or HRV
data.

6.5. Results and Discussion

6.5.1. Quantitative Analyses

Measures from behavior, physiology and understanding were collected from all children.
During the collection of metrics of physiology, I was unable to gather data from 7
children either due to technical issues with the camera or because poor lighting made it
difficult for the Affdex algorithm to analyze data. During the intervention, 1 child asked
not to be filmed -- impeding the collection of behavior data. During the collection of
understanding data, 2 children did not answer to the questions for the POSITIVE-
ACTIVE condition, and 1 child didn’t answer to the questions for the NEGATIVE
ACTIVE condition.

With regards to the behavior metric, I found that 21 out of 26 children (80%) acted
appropriately to the POSITIVE-ACTIVE condition and 15 out of 26 children (57%) did it
during the NEGATIVE-ACTIVE condition. I proceeded to explore differences between

!39
both the United States and Colombia samples. I ran a Shapiro-Wilk test for both samples
and was unable to reject the null hypothesis. I then performed a sample t-test of
proportions across both POSITIVE and NEGATIVE ACTIVE conditions and found
statistical significance for both POSITIVE-ACTIVE (p=0.02) and NEGATIVE-ACTIVE
condition (p=0.01) values respectively. I also performed a Fisher's exact test on the
population based on their correct/incorrect actions. The effect of location was
significant for both POSITIVE ACTIVE condition (p=0.08) and NEGATIVE-ACTIVE
condition (p=0.001). These findings support my second hypothesis H2 that there are
significant differences between the Colombia and United States samples in terms of
behavior.

Figure 6. Comparison of ratios on correct actions taken by children during ACTIVE conditions.
Significance reported for comparisons across Colombia (n=26) and United States samples (n=13).

With regards to the understanding metric, I found that 20 out of 25 children (80%)
provided reports consistent with the POSITIVE-ACTIVE condition and 20 out of 26
children (76%) were consistent identified the NEGATIVE-ACTIVE condition. I

!40
performed a Shapiro-Wilk test for all ACTIVE and NON-ACTIVE conditions samples
and was unable to reject the null hypothesis. I ran a sample t-test of proportions for both
POSITIVE-ACTIVE and NEGATIVE-ACTIVE across the United States and Colombia
samples. I found no significant differences with POSITIVE-ACTIVE (p = 0.2) and
NEGATIVE-ACTIVE (p = 0.2) values respectively. I then extended the analysis also
using t-test of proportions and found no significance between the POSITIVE NON-

Figure 7. Comparison of the understanding metrics for both POSITIVE and NEGATIVE conditions and their
subsequent ACTIVE and NON-ACTIVE conditions for both United States and Colombia samples.

!41
ACTIVE (p=0.8) and NEGATIVE-NON-ACTIVE conditions (p=0.9). These results do not
come in support of my second hypothesis H2, that differences in samples will be found
with regards of understanding.

One intriguing result that holds across both samples, is the apparent dissonance
between behavior and understanding, in particular across the Colombia population. In
order to explore this finding, I performed a Fisher's test on both populations, and across
both conditions, and found trending results for the POSITIVE-ACTIVE condition
(p=0.09) and no statistical significance (p=0.3) for the NEGATIVE-ACTIVE condition. I
further investigated this by running a Pearson correlation coefficient test between the
behavior and understanding metrics for both active conditions across both samples. I
found a positive correlation and almost significant results between the two metrics in
the POSITIVE and NEGATIVE-ACTIVE conditions (r = 0.931, p = 0.06) and a negative
correlation with not significant results for the United States sample (-0.919, p=0.08). I
hypothesize that one of the reasons why the percentage of Colombian children who
both behaved and reported understanding appropriately was higher, has to do with the
age range of this sample (8-12 years old) as opposed to the age range of the United
States sample (6-12 years old). More data will be needed in order to further explore
these results.

With regards to the physiology metric, and after computing values for all 20 children I
was able to collect data from, I found that for the POSITIVE-ACTIVE and NEGATIVE-
ACTIVE conditions the valence values were 18.94 and -3.93 respectively. In order to
compare these values with the results obtained from the United States sample, I
performed a Shapiro-Wilk test and was able to reject the null hypothesis. Therefore I
proceeded to use non-parametric analyses. I ran a Mann-Whitney's U test to evaluate
the difference in valence values after the median filtering process. I found a statistically
significant difference for the valence values in the NEGATIVE-ACTIVE condition
(p=0.01) but no significance for the NEGATIVE-ACTIVE condition values (p=0.3)

These results come in partial support to my second hypothesis H2. Although consistent
with the results from the United States sample in that they show a correct trend toward
positive or negative emotional expression, these results are not particularly high. New
analysis using different filtering techniques as well as newer releases from the Affdex
package are needed in order to delve deeper. I proceeded to compare values for this
metric across both United States and Colombia samples.

Children answered a perception survey before the end of the session. Figure 9 shows
the distribution of answers provided by children in the Colombia sample. Following the

!42
 Figure 8. Median filtered valence values comparison for ACTIVE conditions on both Colombia
and United States samples. Significance reported for each condition.

results observed in the United States sample, a large portion of this population assigned
emotional characteristics to the robots.

Children in the Colombia group were on average more likely to think that the robot was
smarter than them (74%) as opposed to the 46% reported by children in the United
States sample. One potential explanation for this difference can be the novelty effect of
the robot in the Colombia sample.

Although children had been exposed to robots through popular culture, staff at both
schools confirmed it was the first time a robot of this kind was brought to school.
Because of how expressive and social these agents are, it is possible that children
without prior exposure tend to perceive these robots as highly intelligent.

I compared both United States and Colombia samples using a Shapiro-Wilk test and
was unable to reject the null hypothesis. I then performed sample t-test of proportions
answers to two questions in particular: “robots are smarter than me” and “robots are real”. I
did not find statistical significance in difference between these two questions with
values (p = 0.7) and (p = 0.8) respectively. Altogether, these results do not come in

!43
 Figure 9. Aggregated results to the robot perception survey, USA sample. N = 13. “BR” (blue robot),
“RR” (red robot, “Rs” (robots).

support of my third hypothesis H3, that there will be significant differences in

perception between children in the Colombia and United States samples.

Finally, I was interested in finding how the three metrics I proposed for the intervention,
namely behavior, understanding and physiology could be predictive of children’s levels of
empathy. Generally speaking, correlation is indicative of dependence. Therefore, I
explored how close the variables of interest were to having a linear relationship with
each other taking as a reference each of the scores for empathy: Empathic Concern and
Perspective Taking. If any significant correlation were to appear, I would then measure
the degree of correlation in order to determine which one contributes more to the
correlation.

First, I ran a correlation function between the two main empathy metrics from the IRI
for the Colombia sample, in a similar fashion as used in the pilot study. Figure 10 shows
both analyses. Interesting variable interactions between aspects of physiology and

!44
Empathy Concern as well as interactions between the understanding and behavior
metrics; both consistent with some of the results presented in this section and related
with my first hypothesis H1.

Figure 11. Correlation charts

for both Empathic Concern and
Perspective Taking for the
Colombia sample. Valence
values were aggregated from
both NEGATIVE and
POSITIVE conditions and
collated into one metric of
emotional expressivity.

!45
I also ran correlation charts for all metrics of interest across both dimensions of empathy
for the entire sample of children. These are shown on Figure 11. I was not able to find
any consistent correlations. Physiology values of valence appear to have the strongest
relationship with both empathy dimensions, but its values are not statistically
significant. I was not able to confirm my first hypothesis H1. Further statistical and
predictive modeling work needs to be done in exploring potential correlations across
metrics of interest.

Figure 12. Correlation charts for

Empathic Concern and Perspective
Taking metrics and variables of
interest: behavior, understanding
and physiology across both
samples. Valence values were
aggregated from both NEGATIVE
and POSITIVE conditions and
collated into one metric of
emotional expressivity.

!46
6.5.2. Qualitative Analyses
As noted, I integrated changes to this second iteration of the intervention based on
feedback from teachers and therapists. The two most important changes made included
additional questions after each interaction regarding what the child had learned and
what they would like to teach others. These questions are also directly connected with
one of my main research questions: “how can social robots assist in the promotion of human
empathy among children?”.

– “Did you learn something about what happened? If yes, what did you learn?”

This question was probably the most revelatory and efficient mechanisms throughout
the entire study with 21 out of 26 students (81%) answering this question. Different than
compartmentalized accounts of each interaction, this question provided children with
an opportunity to reflect globally about what they experienced during the full
intervention.

Children’s answers to this question were, for the most part, related with how to correct
the NEGATIVE conditions of the intervention. Some of them even expanded into other
areas and brought together concepts associated with empathic behavior such as
selflessness and respect:

Participant 004 – To help sick people, to not be selfish.

Participant 007 – It is good to help those in trouble.
Participant 012 – To listen to people.
Participant 018 – To help others and to not be selfish.
Participant 029 – To not be rude to others. To keep company to friends who are sick.
Participant 031 – To listen to others and help.
Participant 032 – To be more respectful to others and to listen to others when they need it.

Other reports were less intentionally related with the intervention conditions, but kept a
trend towards positive behavior in the future. Some of them were slightly off-topic but
for the most part they can be traced back to what the intervention was about:

Participant 006 – To make lots of friends.

Participant 017 – To always share.
Participant 028 – It is better to be kind instead of fight. We should help others feel happy.
Participant 030 – To not make people feel bad.

!47
Other children mentioned the robots directly as protagonists of what they learned.

Participant 027 – That one robot is happy and the other is not [...] robots are fun and
friendly.

Figure 13. Notes written

to robots by children one
school in Colombia.
1. “Red Tega, I believe you
have to learn to include
and worry more about
others.”
2. “That you have to be
friendly with others and
not be rude to your
friends. I love you. Your
new friend loves you a
lot.”

Participant 022 – Robots can have friendships and we should help those who are in need.
Participant 040 – That humans and a robots have lots of things in common as well as many
differences.

Lastly, children reported aspects of empathy and transfer of learning directly associated
with the intervention.

Participant 034 – Robots showed a situation that if it happens in real life, I am prepared to
do what needs to be done. It is a nice example of empathy.
Participant 039 – That in life you can't see what is going wrong with the conversation.
With these examples you can learn what to do in a conversation.

!48
–“If you could teach others about what you experienced today, what would you
teach them?”

This question had the purpose of intentionally tap into what children might take out of
the experience in the form of something they could teach. In return, this would allow a
peek into how children’s learning might be transferred into other contexts. Only 10
children out of 26 (38%) answered this question. One reason there was a lower rate of
answers compared with the previous question might have to do with the fact that not
all children may feel compelled to teach what they learn. Also, differences in children’s
personalities might have an influence as to whether they feel comfortable sharing what
they learned with others:

Participant 043 – To listen more to other people.

Participant 042 – To understand how people are feeling.

Figure 14. Notes written

to robots by children one
school in Colombia.
1. “Show more interest
and respect the words
from others and you will
see that you could do
activities with others and
make friends.”
2. “You should help your
friend when he needs
you.”
3. “More relationships”
4. “You should be a little
more to your [with your]
friend.”

Participant 035 – To include other people more.

Participant 031 – I'll teach that you should listen to others.
Participant 022 – To be respectful to other people.
Participant 039 – I'll teach them the things you need to create a connection.

!49
One fascinating finding from these reports is that they are all aligned with one core
empathy skill: listening. This ability is directly related with the Perspective Taking
dimension of empathy as defined by (Mark H. Davis, 1980).

Taken together, these answers show great potential for what interventions using social
robots can facilitate for children’s learning. They provide evidence that interactions
between two robots can serve as a mechanism to model behavior and are indicative that
children could potentially transform the content of these kinds of interventions into
actionable learning. Both qualitative and quantitative results from the Colombia sample,
provide strong indication of the great potential of this technology for this particular
application.

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Chapter 7. Exploratory Study with
Behaviorally-Challenged Children

7.1. Overview & Conditions

Finally, I ran a small exploratory study looking at what effects this intervention might
have in behaviorally-challenged children. In order to do so, I consulted with therapists
at one of the schools in Colombia and recruited a small sample of 4 children who have
been identified at school as having aggressive tendencies. It worth noting that these
children have not been clinically diagnosed, but rather profiled by a professional at
school. Also, this intervention does not seek to diagnose these children.

Based on the results reported in previous sections, I was interested in exploring how
exposing these children to a combination of in-person activities and the social robot
interaction would compare to other samples. This approach to the intervention
responds to suggestions contributed by teachers and therapists during workshops.

The layout of the sessions for this group included a teaching part prior to interactions
but after children took the IRI empathy test. The teaching part was based on the
materials provided by the RULER framework, a validated curriculum designed to
promote emotional literacy (Castillo et al., 2013; Rivers et al., 2013) developed at the Yale
Center for Emotional Intelligence. In this activity, children are introduced to key
concepts or Feeling Words, the first step of the RULER intervention as described in
(Brackett, Rivers, Reyes, & Salovey, 2012). The technical platform, data collection
protocols, children's age bracket and data collection instruments remained the same as
in the cross-cultural study.

!51
7.2. Methods

7.2.1. Participants
Four (4) children ages 8-12 from one low SES school in Bogotá, Colombia participated in
the study. Average age for children was 9.75 years (SD: 0.95), two of them were 9 years-
old, the other two were 11 years-old. All four children were Spanish native speakers.
Children spent half an hour in a teaching session introducing feeling words in a room
accompanied only by the experimenter. Audio and video was recorded for all children.
All children fully completed all tests and took part in the interaction. Children had an
average of 2.7 siblings and a household average of 4.2 family members.

7.2.3. Interaction and Conditions

The overall interaction was the same as the one used in the cross-cultural study.
Consent was given by all parents or guardians and therapists at schools. All
demographic data was verified with school staff. The experimenter facilitated the
teaching sessions in which the following feeling words were explained through
situation-based examples: sad, lonely, calm, cooperative, caring and kind (Spanish versions
were: triste, solitario/a, calmado/a, cooperador, atento, amable). Questions asked after the
interaction were the same, and answers to the questions were later analyzed to find out
if feeling words appeared. Same as in the previous studies, children were given a piece
of paper to add further feedback for the robots. The flow of the intervention was the
same used in the cross-cultural study.

7.3. Study questions

Because of the exploratory nature of this study, I did not formulate hypothesis per se. I
rather asked a series of questions to help me understand the potential of the
intervention for this particular population. Questions were as follows:

Q1. Will children show similar behavior and understanding compared to previous groups?
Q2. With what frequency will feeling words introduced in teaching sessions appear during
children’s accounts of the interactions?

!52
7.4. Results and Discussion
After I finalized running the exploratory study with children, I watched the videos of
the intervention along with the therapist at school. All the results for behavior and
understanding were conferred with the therapists and her insights are integrated into the
following reports.

Observations on the behavior metric show that 3 out of 4 participants took an

appropriate action during the NEGATIVE-ACTIVE condition. However, none of them
took action during the POSITIVE-ACTIVE condition. This observation was explained
by the therapist as a potential effect of the continuous exposure these children have to
negative reinforcement. In other words, these children are constantly exposed to
emotionally negative situations and have, in general, an understanding of how such
situations can be solved based on their experience and their needs. In contrast, exposure
to situations showing positive empathic traits might not be that common, therefore,
they might not have a full understanding of how to properly respond to them.

In order to further explore this insight, I found that 2 out of those 3 children reported
understanding what the NEGATIVE-ACTIVE interaction was about. Interestingly, the
child who did not identify correctly the aforementioned condition, was the child with
the highest values of emotional expression on negative valence (-38.29) and the one who
answered and spoke the least during the interaction. According to the therapist, it tends
to be more difficult to support behaviorally-challenged children to develop skills that
require positive responses due to the aforementioned negative reinforcement
phenomenon. This points to the potential opportunity of designing interventions that
tailor to this specific need.

With regards to the understanding metric, I was not only interested in how children
reported back from the interactions, but most importantly, whether they will use the
feeling words they were introduced to in the activity prior to the intervention.

For both the POSITIVE-ACTIVE and NEGATIVE-ACTIVE conditions, only 2 out of the
4 children in the sample (not the same child) reported understanding what was
happening in the interaction. More importantly, feeling words appeared in the reports
of 3 out of the 4 children in the group. The words sad, caring and lonely showed up on
the reports from 3 out 4 children. Although it is important to acknowledge that the
sample size for this exploratory study is small, based on the reports and profiles of
children in this group provided by therapists at the school, this finding is particularly
encouraging.

!53
 P001 P010 P024 P025

POSITIVE-ACTIVE
0 0 0 0
BEHAVIOR

POSITIVE-ACTIVE
0 1 1 0
UNDERSTANDING

NEGATIVE-ACTIVE
1 0 1 1
BEHAVIOR

NEGATIVE-ACTIVE
0 0 1 1
UNDERSTANDING

VALENCE
-38.29 15.99 -8.14 -35.38
NEGATIVE-ACTIVE

VALENCE
30.55 10.37 33.49 65.01
POSITIVE-ACTIVE

REPORTED There are moments You can have That Tegas will play
LEARNING where we need to discussions with your together more, to
worry about others. friends, two robots can pay more attention
Provide company live without hurting to each other
when others are sad. each other
Treat others well

REPORTED Make robot feel better Provide help if For robots to listen to Lonely
UNDERSTANDING someone is sick, be each other, that Tega
kind with people won't be lonely
around you, find anymore
friends when you are
sad. Care about others

FEELING WORDS Caring (to worry Caring (pay more

about others), sad, attention to each
caring (to care) other)

Table 2. Summary of data for the children in the exploratory study. Dimensions included are behavior-taken/not-
taken during conditions, whether the child identified correctly or not each condition, valence values, answers to the
learning and understanding questions, as well as feeling words reported.

Following the results of previous samples, the physiology metrics showed a similar trend
with negative values associated with the NEGATIVE-ACTIVE condition, and positive
values with the POSITIVE-ACTIVE condition. This aspect of the intervention was
particularly encouraging for therapists at two schools. Children demonstrating
attention spans longer than 5 minutes, smiling, keeping eye contact, being kind and
acting worried, were some of the behaviors the therapist remarked as new for children
in the sample.

Clearly there is a need for more data in order to validate these results. In answer to my
first question Q1, and based on the reported observations, I was able to show similar

!54
performance in all behavior, understanding and physiology metrics, with the caveat that no
statistical significance was shown given the sample size.
In response to Q2, although feeling words did not show consistently across all children
in the sample, some of them did give accounts of the interactions that included target
words. It is important to acknowledge that no formal pre-test was administered in order
to find out if children were already familiar with the concepts. Also, based on how basic
some of these concepts are, it is likely some children already understood or knew them.
However, it is not clear if they knew how to put them in action in context. Further
research would be needed in order to determine these aspects.

Based on the data collected, and the reports provided by the school therapist, it is
possible to conclude that this intervention holds great potential for benefiting this
particular population.

!55
Chapter 8. Conclusions & Future Work

8.1. Conclusions
With this thesis, I was able to answer all the research questions motivating this work. I
contributed a multidimensional intervention framework that utilizes two social robots
along with behavioral, psychological, and physiological data, to provide a richer picture
of how children understand and express empathy. For example, by contrasting behavior
and understanding metrics, it is possible to identify when a child might have a
conceptual understanding of what empathy is, but is lacking corresponding behavioral
expression. This information can be leveraged to design and implement interventions
focused on practical skills.

Furthermore, I demonstrated that the interaction between each of these metrics can tap
into children’s empathic models, with a special focus on contributing to the design and
building of more contextualized interventions. For example, through the cross-cultural
component of my experimental approach, I was able to demonstrate significant
differences between children’s empathic models in Colombia and the United States.
Advancing this approach to designing programs and interventions around empathy, is
central to this work.

Through a series of workshops with teachers and therapists, I was able to find what are
the expectations, limitations and opportunities they observe in social robots as a
technology to support empathy at schools. Particularly, with the help of therapists, I
was able to iterate over my intervention framework and produce a final version used in
an exploratory study with promising results. I was also able to enrich results from the
exploratory study by working together with therapists at schools. This design
framework adds to a nascent vertient of work of co-design within the HRI community.

Also, through an exploratory study of a population of behaviorally challenged children,

and by using the framework I designed, I contributed an early version of an
intervention to support the fostering and understanding of empathy at schools. Results

!56
from this study were promising and point to exciting areas of work. This is an
important contribution given that to date, and to the best of my knowledge, there is no
evidence of programs using social robots and a multidimensional framework of
empathy across behavior, physiology and cognition, to provide support to aggressive
children.

On the other hand, it is important to bring attention to the many challenges, many of
them articulated by teachers, that deploying this technology may have. Not only there
are many logistical, financial, ethical and political pieces that need to come into place for
this technology to reach a school, but there is also need for more exploration as to what
potential and relevance teachers observe in social robots.

Finally, and bringing all the contributions and findings from this thesis together, I was
able to demonstrate that social robots can provide a contained, interactive environment
for children to practice empathy skills. In particular, a paradigm that utilizes two social
robots for assisting and augmenting efforts at schools looking at promoting empathy in
children. To be exposed to interactions requiring empathic skills that take advantage of
the unique social presence of robots, can potentially contribute to children learning and
transferring empathy skills to other social contexts.

8.2. Future Work

There is, however, a lot more work that should be done in order to complete the
painting this thesis has begun to sketch. First and foremost, it is crucial to increase
sample sizes, in particular for interventions looking at supporting aggressive children.
More analyses looking at differences across gender, race or socioeconomic status, can
also help enrich our design perspective.

One key aspect that can help determine the success or failure of these interventions is
the investigation of how children transfer the skills they learn to other scenarios.
Research shows that this behavioral transfer is possible from robots to humans and
from animals to humans (Taylor & Signal, 2005; Sprinkle, 2008). The need of tracking
learning this way, points to the need of longitudinal studies in the future. One attempt
to do this without having to necessarily implement longitudinal studies, has to do with
the tracking of concepts introduced prior to interacting with the robots. For the case of
the exploratory study I used the RULER framework with some promising results.
However, tracking learning in this dimension needs to be done in a more robust
manner.

!57
Finally, being able to build predictive models that can help gaining insight into
children’s empathic models, by using the metrics proposed in the current intervention
framework, will be highly beneficial. Having the capability to approximate aspects of
empathy associated with behavior, cognition or physiology based on one or a combination
of these metrics, can help untangle how each of these factors is contributing to the effect
of the intervention. It can also provide the possibility of tailoring and rapidly iterate
intervention designs in the future.

!58
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10. Appendix

10.1. Appendix A – Teacher Workshops Outlines

Session 1

Learning goals

• To understand what role empathy can play in reducing aggressive behaviors - To

learn ways in which empathy can be fostered in the classroom
• To learn how social robots can be a tool to teach empathy

Objectives
• Explore and brainstorm ways in which social robots can be used as a tool for
empathy

Activities
• Introduction to empathy (20 min)

• Empathy in the classroom (15 min)

• Meet the social robots! (20 min)
• Putting the robots to work - Ideation session (30 min)

Session 2

Learning goals
To better understand how social robots can model child learning - To be exposed to
empathy interventions in the classroom

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Objectives
• Explore novel ways to use robots to promote empathy
• Sketch the design of an intervention using a social robot

Activities
• What social robots can do for child learning (15 min)

• Successful empathy interventions in the classroom (15 min)

• The empathic robot! - Ideation session (40 min)
• Sketching a robotic intervention (30 min)

10.2. Appendix B – Child-Robot Interaction Script Samples (English and

Spanish)

English – Negative-Active Condition

• Robot 1: Hello! (happy)

• Robot 2: Hello (sounds a bit sad)
• Robot 1: I just got to see a movie about a robot called BB8, it was so much fun! (excited)
• Robot 2: Wow, that sounds great (sounds a bit sad)
• Robot 1: Yes, it was incredible. He made many friends and they did many things together
(happy)
• Robot 2: A-ha (lengthened, sounds a bit sad)
• Robot 1: They flew through space again and again. It was amazing! (excited)
• Robot 2: Ahh... okay (long and sad)
• Robot 1: Hey, are you okay? (a little happy)
• Robot 2: Well ... someone was rude to me yesterday, it made me feel sad
• Robot 1: Ahhh ... but wait, now I do not want to hear this, I want to tell you about the
movie. I am sure that our new friend (the child) wants to hear about it too, right new
friend?

• CHILD’S ACTION

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 • Robot 1a: You see, let me tell you more (happy) (NEG)
• Robot 1b: Ahh okay, it makes sense (neutral) (POS)
• Robot 2: I'm not feeling very well, I think I'm going to sleep
• Robot 1: Ahh, okay, bye! (happy)

Spanish – Positive–Active Condition

• Robot 1. ¿Oye Tega, quieres jugar un videojuego? (feliz)

• Robot 2. Suena divertido… (suena un poco triste)
• Robot 1. Me enseñaron hace poco un juego de galaxias, es increíble! (feliz)
• Robot 2. No me estoy sintiendo muy bien…(triste/enfermo)
• Robot 1. Ohh no, estás bien?
• Robot 2. Que mal!
• Robot 1. Me ayudaría si alguien pudiera masajear mi estómago (triste/enfermo)
• Robot 2. Es cierto, eso te haría sentir mejor. Quizá nuestros nuevo compañero puede
ayudarte?

• ACCIÓN DEL NIÑO

• Robot 1. Ufff, se siente muy bien, muchas gracias! (feliz) (POS)

• Robot 1. Bueno, mejor voy a dormir una siesta para sentirme mejor (triste/enfermo)
(NEG)
• Robot 2. Suena como una gran idea! Voy a estar acá cuando te despiertes (neutral)
• Robot 1. Gracias nuevo compañero
• Robot 2. Okay, muchas gracias

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