Young children’s empathy towards robot dog in relative to stuffed toy dog

Abstract

This study examined young children’s empathy towards interacted entity and none interacted agent, and whether the interaction or the appearance of the agent is more relevant on children’s the empathy, the entities include an interacted robot, a stuffed toy dog and a stone. Preschoolers (5-6 years of age, N=69) watched videos of three agents, including agent introducing cuts, agent struck by human hands cuts, agent placing in a box struck by human hands cuts. All of these three agents are non-living entities, an interacted robot dog with metal surface, a non-interacted stuffed toy dog (appearance alike a real dog), a stone. The preschoolers were required to ask a list of questions to obtain the data indicating their empathy towards each agent. The results revealed that the young children ascribe more anthropomorphism to robot dog relative to stuffed toy dog, while the empathy to both have no significance difference.