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

2010年代中期出生的美国孩子可以说是第一代能够从记事起就有意义地使用计算机设备的人。鉴于此，重要的是提供有利于幼儿发展的技术。一个经常被忽视的发展领域是自我调节。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，这反过来又使孩子在幼儿园及以后的表现更好。高质量的社交游戏通常包括一群孩子参与假装游戏，包括共同的目标、计划、角色扮演、互动社会对话、谈判、即兴创作，以及使用普通的物理道具（而不是现实的玩具）。然而，执行高质量的社交游戏需要大量的教师培训。本项目将透过“故事嘉年华”的发展，降低障碍，促进高质素的社交游戏活动。故事嘉年华将包括一个供教师和护理人员设置和计划游戏活动的应用程序，以及语音代理，以支持高质量的社交游戏。StoryCarnival的发展将带来语音代理的新探索，以促进面对面的社交活动。开发的软件将免费提供，推广活动将包括为学前教育工作者举行的国家和区域会议。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缺口：确定3-4岁儿童可能通过互动技术解决的常见和关键技能缺陷；开发适合这个年龄组的设计方法；并确定除移动设备以外的技术，这些技术可能适合这一人群的发展，可持续的，广泛可用。该项目将扩展先前的研究，该研究确定了执行功能，包括自我调节是3-4岁儿童普遍的关键技能缺陷，以及高质量的社交游戏是一种可以通过互动技术促进提高这些技能的活动。在此基础上，本项目的主要目标是通过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的高质量社交游戏应用程序。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。该方法将使看护人能够跟踪游戏情境，为他们提供基于情境的语音代理控制选项，并要求他们反馈特定代理交互的效果，以改进对话和活动建议。该项目将包括评估StoryCarnival对高质量社交游戏的影响，方法包括实地研究、自动使用日志和对大量用户的调查。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.