Young children´s perception of IrobiQ, the teacher assistive robot, with reference to speech register

The purpose of this study is to explore young children´s perception of IrobiQ, the teacher assistive robot. Participants of this study were fifty 5-year-olds from three different kindergarten centers with at least two years of experience in HRI environments. The study was conducted based on the “the hypothesis of speech register”. A researcher read a story from a storybook to each child and asked to choose the one that is the most suitable replacement of human speech tones and accents among a robot, a friend and a toy. The findings of this study were that the children perceived a robot as a hybrid compound entity, not as a complete human being though they perceived it closer to a human than an artificial thing. They were likely to use cognitive distinctions which are unique to human being, as the criteria to verify their answers.