Abstract
The current study investigated how individual differences among children affect the added value of social robots for teaching second language (L2) vocabulary to young children. Specifically, we investigated the moderating role of three individual child characteristics deemed relevant for language learning: first language (L1) vocabulary knowledge, phonological memory, and selective attention. We expected children low in these abilities to particularly benefit from being assisted by a robot in a vocabulary training. An L2 English vocabulary training intervention consisting of seven sessions was administered to 193 monolingual Dutch five-year-old children over a three- to four-week period. Children were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: 1) a tablet only, 2) a tablet and a robot that used deictic (pointing) gestures (the no-iconic-gestures condition), or 3) a tablet and a robot that used both deictic and iconic gestures (i.e., gestures depicting the target word; the iconic-gestures condition). There also was a control condition in which children did not receive a vocabulary training, but played dancing games with the robot. L2 word knowledge was measured directly after the training and two to four weeks later. In these post-tests, children in the experimental conditions outperformed children in the control condition on word knowledge, but there were no differences between the three experimental conditions. Several moderation effects were found. The robot’s presence particularly benefited children with larger L1 vocabularies or poorer phonological memory, while children with smaller L1 vocabularies or better phonological memory performed better in the tablet-only condition. Children with larger L1 vocabularies and better phonological memory performed better in the no-iconic-gestures condition than in the iconic-gestures condition, while children with better selective attention performed better in the iconic-gestures condition than the no-iconic-gestures condition. Together, the results showed that the effects of the robot and its gestures differ across children, which should be taken into account when designing and evaluating robot-assisted L2 teaching interventions.
Highlights
The current study investigated how individual differences among children affect the added value of social robots for teaching second language (L2) vocabulary to young children
The current study addresses the use of social robots in language education
We will discuss the moderator effects on the comparisons of the robot-assisted versus tablet-only conditions, and on the iconic-gestures versus no-iconic-gestures conditions
Summary
The current study addresses the use of social robots in language education. We investigated how individual differences among children affect the added value of social robots for teaching second language (L2) vocabulary to young children. While studying the effects of robots is in itself important in view of applications in education, it is crucial to compare the effectiveness of robots to that of cheaper and more accessible technological aids such as tablets. Several potential advantages of robots relative to other technologies such as tablets have been identified in extant research. Social robots allow for interactions that make use of the physical environment (e.g., acting upon objects, enacting particular movements or operations, using various types of gestures) and they can stimulate more natural, human-like interactions because of their humanoid appearance (Belpaeme et al, 2018; van den Berghe et al, 2019). The use of iconic gestures is known to support L2 vocabulary learning (Tellier, 2008; Macedonia et al, 2011; Rowe et al, 2013), and a robot’s iconic gestures and other non-verbal cues have been found to benefit learners as well (Kory Westlund et al, 2017; de Wit et al, 2018)
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