"Oh no, my instructions were wrong!" An Exploratory Pilot Towards Children’s Trust in Social Robots

Whilst there has been growing interest in the use of social robots in educational settings, the majority of this research focuses on learning outcomes, with less emphasis on the social processes surrounding these interactions. One such understudied factor is children’s trust in the robot as a teacher. Trust is a relevant domain in that if and how children trust a robot could influence their subsequent learning outcomes. The extent to which the robot’s behaviour (including making errors) influences trust is yet to be fully explored. Consequently, the goal of this research is to determine the role of trust in children’s learning from social robots. We report a pilot study investigating the conceptualisation and measurement of chil-dren’s trust in robots. 33 children aged between 4-9 completed a computational thinking learning task with a NAO robot at a Science Festival. Observations of the interactions in terms of developing tasks and measurements for child robot interaction are discussed. The findings tentatively suggest children’s trust in the robot can be divided into two parts: social affiliation towards the robot, and perceived competence/reliability of the robot.