Co-creation as a Facilitator for Co-regulation in Child-Robot Interaction

While interacting with a social robot, children have a need to express themselves and have their expressions acknowledged by the robot. A need that is often unaddressed by the robot, due to its limitations in understanding the expressions of children. To keep the child-robot interaction manageable the robot takes control, undermining children's ability to co-regulate the interaction. Coregulation is important for having a fulfilling social interaction. We developed a co-creation activity that aims to facilitate more co-regulation. Children are enabled to create sound effects, gestures, and light shows for the robot to use during their conversation. Results from a user study (N = 59 school children, 7-11 y.o.) showed that the co-creation activity successfully facilitated co-regulation by improving children's agency. Co-creation furthermore increases children's acceptance of the robot.