Adapt, Explain, Engage—A Study on How Social Robots Can Scaffold Second-language Learning of Children

Social robots are increasingly applied to support children’s learning, but how a robot can foster (or may hinder) learning is still not fully clear. One technique used by teachers is scaffolding, temporarily assisting learners to achieve new skills or levels of understanding they would not reach on their own. We ask if and how a social robot can be utilized to scaffold second-language learning of children at kindergarten age (4--7 years). Specifically, we explore an adapt-and-explain scaffolding strategy in which a robot acts as a peer-like tutor who dynamically adapts its behavior or the learning tasks to the cognitive and affective state of the child, and provides verbal explanations of these adaptations. An evaluation study with 40 children shows that children benefit from the learning adaptation and that the explanations have a positive effect especially for slower learners. Further, in 76% of all cases the robot managed to “re-engage” children who started to disengage from the learning interaction, helping them to achieve an overall higher learning gain. These findings demonstrate that a social robot equipped with suitable scaffolding mechanisms can increase engagement and learning, especially when being adaptive to the individual behavior and states of a child learner.