"Feeling Unseen": Exploring the Impact of Adaptive Social Robots on User's Social Agency During Learning

Adaptive robots have the potential to support the overloaded healthcare system by helping new stroke survivors learn about their conditions. However, current adaptive robots often fail to maintain users' engagement during interactions. This study investigated the impact of an adaptive robot on Social Agency which has been proposed to influence engagement during learning. Twenty-four healthy subjects participated in a study where they learned about stroke symptoms from a robot providing social cues either 1) when their engagement measured by a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) decreased or 2) at random intervals. While the results confirmed that Social Agency correlated with Engagement, the robot's adaptive behaviour did not increase Social Agency, Engagement, and Information Recall. Using qualitative methods, we propose that adaptive robots need to explicitly acknowledge users to increase Social Agency.