EXP: Collaborative Research: A Personalized Storyteller Companion to Promote Preschooler Language Skills

EXP：协作研究：促进学龄前儿童语言技能的个性化讲故事伴侣

• 批准号: 1523118
• 负责人: Cynthia Breazeal
• 金额: $ 44.09万
• 依托单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-09-01 至 2018-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1523118&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EXP; Collaborative; Research; Personalized; Storyteller

Early language ability, including vocabulary skills and oral language knowledge during preschool, is an important predictor of children's academic success in subsequent school years. Social robots that can engage children as personalized learning companions hold great promise in augmenting the learning experience of children with parents and teachers. The ultimate goal is to foster the development, learning and promotion of academic achievements and the well-being of children. Such robots offer unique opportunities of guided, personalized and controlled social interaction during the delivery of a desired curriculum. They can play, learn and engage with children in the real world -- physically, socially and emotively. This research project is developing and evaluating an autonomous personalized social robot tutor-companion that can engage preschool children in storytelling activities during a long-term interaction. The research goal is to assess the impact that such an interaction may have on children's language skills development. The project advances the fields of autonomous storytelling generation and analysis, as well as the interaction between autonomous social robots and preschool children to promote learning. Its broader impact is to develop an effective technology that augments the preschool setting that promotes children's language development in a personalized and socially engaging way. This research project develops and assesses the efficacy of an autonomous, personalized social robot that engages as a learning companion on the language development of pre-school children in the context of storytelling tasks. For this purpose, the research project develops a novel automatic story analysis tool, and a new personalized story generation algorithm, that pushes the envelope of current understanding of free-form storytelling and how fosters the development of early language skills in pre-school aged children. Additionally, the research develops of a fully autonomous social robot that interacts with preschool children in the real-life environment of a preschool. A 9-month longitudinal study at multiple preschool sites is carried out to evaluate the impact of long-term interaction with the storytelling robot on children's engagement and language skill development. The research aims to increase the current understanding of the impact of longitudinal interaction with social robot on children's language development. Ultimately, this can inspire new tools and practices for early pre-literacy and language education (as well as other domains such as STEM) in the home, classroom, and beyond.

早期语言能力，包括学前阶段的词汇技能和口语知识，是儿童在随后几年学业成功的重要预测因素。社交机器人可以让孩子们成为个性化的学习伙伴，在增加孩子与父母和老师的学习体验方面有很大的希望。最终目标是促进儿童的发展、学习和促进学业成绩和福祉。这样的机器人提供了独特的机会，引导，个性化和控制的社会互动期间所需的课程交付。他们可以在真实的世界中与儿童一起玩耍、学习和参与-身体上、社会上和情感上。该研究项目正在开发和评估一种自主的个性化社交机器人导师伴侣，可以让学龄前儿童在长期互动中参与讲故事活动。研究的目的是评估这种互动可能对儿童语言技能发展的影响。该项目推进了自主讲故事生成和分析领域，以及自主社交机器人与学龄前儿童之间的互动，以促进学习。其更广泛的影响是开发一种有效的技术，增强学前教育环境，以个性化和社会参与的方式促进儿童的语言发展。该研究项目开发和评估了一种自主的、个性化的社交机器人的功效，该机器人在讲故事任务的背景下作为学前儿童语言发展的学习伙伴。为此，该研究项目开发了一种新颖的自动故事分析工具和一种新的个性化故事生成算法，推动了当前对自由形式讲故事的理解以及如何促进学龄前儿童早期语言技能的发展。此外，该研究还开发了一种完全自主的社交机器人，可以在学龄前儿童的现实生活环境中与学龄前儿童互动。在多个学前场所进行了为期9个月的纵向研究，以评估与讲故事机器人的长期互动对儿童参与和语言技能发展的影响。该研究旨在增加当前对与社交机器人的纵向互动对儿童语言发展的影响的理解。最终，这可以激发家庭、教室和其他地方早期扫盲和语言教育（以及STEM等其他领域）的新工具和实践。

项目成果

A Model-free Affective Reinforcement Learning Approach to Personalization of an Autonomous Social Robot Companion for Early Literacy

用于早期识字的自主社交机器人伴侣个性化的无模型情感强化学习方法

• 发表时间: 2019
• 期刊: Proceedings of the ... AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence
• 作者: Park, H.W.;Grover, I.;Spaulding, S.;Gomez, L.;Breazeal, C.
• 通讯作者: Breazeal, C.