Just as dogs, cats, and other animal pets can arouse emotions and behaviors in children that no one, not even parents, might arouse in them, toy-like humanoid robots can get children to confide in them that they would not. no human.
In a recent study, carried out by the team of Hatice Gunes, from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, the scope of the phenomenon has been investigated.
The team, made up of roboticists, computer scientists and psychiatrists from the University of Cambridge, has carried out the research with 28 boys and girls between the ages of 8 and 13 as study subjects.
The team had a Nao model humanoid robot, which stands regarding 60 centimeters tall, comparable to that of a very young child, to ask the questions of a series of standard psychological questionnaires designed to assess the mental well-being of each participant.
Children were willing to trust the robot, and in some cases shared information with it that they had not yet shared through the standard assessment method of online or in-person questionnaires.
This suggests that robots of this class may be a better tool for detecting mental well-being problems in younger people than parental observations or conventionally administered mental assessment questionnaires that the child must answer.
Robot of the Nao model, the one used in the tests of this study to interact with boys and girls. (Photo: Rachel Gardner)
To the best of the study authors’ knowledge, this is the first time robots have been used to assess mental well-being in childhood.
As Gunes and colleagues argue, robots might be a useful adjunct to traditional mental health assessment methods, although they are not intended to be a substitute for professional mental health work. (Font: NCYT de Amazings)