Exploring the Developmental Aspects of the Uncanny Valley Effect on Children’s Preferences for Robot Appearance

Abstract

As robotic technology advances, robots are increasingly being designed and utilized for applications involving children across various fields. Since the acceptance of robots is profoundly affected by their appearance, understanding children’s preferences for the looks of robots becomes imperative. The uncanny valley effect (UVE) posits that the perceived likeability of robots increases as their appearance becomes more humanlike but then sharply drops when they approach near-perfect human similarity before rising once an extremely realistic likeness is achieved. Due to inconsistent results in the literature regarding when humans develop a sense of uncanniness toward humanlike robots, the present study aims to examine the emergence of the UVE in children. 67 1st-graders (aged six to seven years) and 95 4th-graders (aged nine to ten years) evaluated 12 robot faces on the scales of likeability, disgust, humanness, and intention to play with the robots (i.e., acceptance). The results demonstrated that the UVE was not observed in 1st-graders or 4th-grade boys. Nevertheless, a UVE-like pattern emerged among 4th-grade girls, particularly in their ratings of likeability and acceptance as a function of robots’ degree of humanness. A positive correlation between likeability and acceptance was consistently found across all age and gender groups. Additionally, negative correlations were found between likeability and disgust, as well as disgust and acceptance, specifically in the fourth graders but not in the first graders. These results suggest that the UVE may not be fully developed in 10-year-old children, with girls potentially exhibiting earlier development than boys. We conclude that age and gender differences should be considered when evaluating children’s preferences for robot appearance and their willingness to interact with robots.