CHS: Small: Supporting 3-4 Year Old Children's High-Quality Social Play Through Voice Agents

CHS：小型：通过语音代理支持3-4岁儿童的高质量社交游戏

• 批准号: 1908476
• 负责人: Juan Pablo Hourcade
• 金额: $ 50万
• 依托单位: University of Iowa
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-10-01 至 2024-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1908476&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CHS; Small; Supporting; Year; Old

Children born in the mid 2010s in the United States are arguably part of the first generation that has been able to make meaningful use of computer devices for as long as they can remember. Given this, it is important to make available technologies that benefit young children's development. One area of development that is often overlooked is self-regulation. Several large studies show that high-quality social play helps young children develop self-regulation, which in turn enables children to perform better in kindergarten and beyond. High-quality social play typically involves groups of children engaged in pretend play that includes common goals, planning, role-play, interactive social dialogue, negotiation, improvisation, and the use of generic physical props as opposed to realistic toys. However, implementing high-quality social play requires a significant amount of teacher training. This project will focus on lowering barriers to facilitating high-quality social play activities through the development of StoryCarnival. StoryCarnival will consist of an application for teachers and caregivers to set up and plan play activities, and voice agents to support high-quality social play as it happens. The development of StoryCarnival will lead to novel explorations of voice agents to facilitate face-to-face social activities. The software developed will be freely available and outreach activities will include national and regional conferences for preschool educators.This project addresses three main research gaps brought about by the increasing availability of interactive technologies for young children: identifying common and critical skill deficits for 3-4 year old children that may be addressed through interactive technologies; developing design methods to use with this age group; and identifying technologies other than mobile devices that may be developmentally appropriate for this population, sustainable, and broadly available. This project will expand on prior research that identified executive functions including self-regulation as a common, critical skill deficit for 3-4 year old children, and high-quality social play as an activity that can enhance these skills and may be facilitated through interactive technologies. This project builds on this foundation with the primary objective of developing and evaluating an innovative approach to voice agents through StoryCarnival, an app to facilitate high-quality social play that supports wide distribution, data collection, English and Spanish language use, and long-term deployments. With this infrastructure, the project will then focus on the iterative development and evaluation of voice agents combining caregiver control with smart recommendations. The approach will be to enable caregivers to keep track of play context, give them options for voice agent control based on context, and ask them for feedback on how well specific agent interactions worked in order to improve dialogue and activity recommendations. The project will include evaluations of the impact of StoryCarnival on high-quality social play through a combination of field studies and automated use logs and surveys with a larger number of users.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

2010 年代中期出生的美国儿童可以说是从他们记事起就能够有意义地使用计算机设备的第一代人。鉴于此，提供有利于幼儿发展的技术非常重要。 经常被忽视的发展领域之一是自我监管。几项大型研究表明，高质量的社交游戏有助于幼儿发展自我调节能力，从而使孩子们在幼儿园及以后表现得更好。高质量的社交游戏通常涉及一群孩子进行假装游戏，包括共同目标、计划、角色扮演、互动社交对话、谈判、即兴创作以及使用通用物理道具（而不是现实玩具）。 然而，实施高质量的社交游戏需要大量的教师培训。 该项目将致力于通过开发 StoryCarnival 来降低障碍，促进高质量的社交游戏活动。 StoryCarnival 将包括一个供教师和护理人员设置和规划游戏活动的应用程序，以及支持高质量社交游戏的语音代理。 StoryCarnival的发展将带来语音代理的新颖探索，以促进面对面的社交活动。 开发的软件将免费提供，外展活动将包括针对学前教育工作者的国家和地区会议。该项目解决了幼儿互动技术日益普及所带来的三个主要研究空白：确定可通过互动技术解决的 3-4 岁儿童的常见和关键技能缺陷；开发适合该年龄段的设计方法；确定除移动设备之外可能适合该人群发展、可持续且广泛可用的技术。该项目将扩展之前的研究，该研究确定了执行功能，包括自我调节作为 3-4 岁儿童常见的关键技能缺陷，以及高质量的社交游戏作为可以增强这些技能并可以通过互动技术促进的活动。该项目建立在这个基础上，主要目标是通过 StoryCarnival 开发和评估语音代理的创新方法，StoryCarnival 是一款促进高质量社交游戏的应用程序，支持广泛分发、数据收集、英语和西班牙语使用以及长期部署。有了这个基础设施，该项目将专注于将护理人员控制与智能建议相结合的语音代理的迭代开发和评估。该方法将使护理人员能够跟踪游戏环境，为他们提供基于环境的语音代理控制选项，并要求他们提供有关特定代理交互效果的反馈，以改进对话和活动建议。该项目将通过结合实地研究和自动使用日志以及对大量用户的调查来评估 StoryCarnival 对高质量社交游戏的影响。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优点和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

项目成果

Stories and Voice Agents to Inspire Preschool Children's Social Play: An Experience with StoryCarnival: Inspiring Preschool Children's Social Play

故事和语音代理激发学龄前儿童的社交游戏：故事嘉年华的体验：激发学前儿童的社交游戏

• DOI: 10.1145/3585088.3593893
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: IDC '23: Proceedings of the 22nd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference
• 作者: Hourcade, Juan Pablo;Bakala, Ewelina;Gerosa, Anaclara;Currin, Flannery Hope
• 通讯作者: Currin, Flannery Hope

Supporting Sociodramatic Play at the Individual Level

支持个人层面的社会戏剧游戏

• DOI: 10.1145/3383668.3419902
• 发表时间: 2020
• 期刊: CHI PLAY '20: Extended Abstracts of the 2020 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play
• 作者: Currin, Flannery Hope;Diederich, Kyle;Blasi, Kaitlyn;Peterman, Kerry;Hourcade, Juan Pablo
• 通讯作者: Hourcade, Juan Pablo

Designing Stories to Inspire Preschoolers’ Creative, Collaborative Roleplay

设计故事来激发学龄前儿童的创造性、协作性角色扮演

• DOI: 10.1145/3582515.3609516
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: ACM
• 作者: Currin, Flannery Hope;Diederich, Kyle;Pantoja, Luiza Superti;Cargo, Hannah;Franzone, Noelle;Geiger-Lee, Josephine;Hourcade, Juan Pablo
• 通讯作者: Hourcade, Juan Pablo

The 4Cs for Young Children’s Technology: Create, Connect, Communicate, and Control.

幼儿技术的 4C：创造、连接、沟通和控制。

• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: XXIII Congreso Internacional de Interacción Persona-Ordenador (Interaccion 2023
• 作者: Hourcade, Juan Pablo;Currin, Flannery
• 通讯作者: Currin, Flannery

Play-Based Design: Giving 3- to 4-Year-Old Children a Voice in the Design Process

基于游戏的设计：让 3 至 4 岁的儿童在设计过程中发表意见

• DOI: 10.1145/3313831.3376407
• 发表时间: 2020
• 期刊: Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
• 作者: Superti Pantoja, Luiza;Diederich, Kyle;Crawford, Liam;Corbett, Megan;Klemm, Samantha;Peterman, Kerry;Currin, Flannery;Hourcade, Juan Pablo
• 通讯作者: Hourcade, Juan Pablo