Study: Stupid robots can make kids smarter reports on some interesting research:
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A story in New Scientist explains that Japanese children are learning to speak English faster than before thanks to a new robot that tries to teach them, but gets things wrong. The discovery comes after Shizuko Matsuzoe and Fumihide Tanaka, two scientists at the University of Tsukuba, studied nineteen children aged between four and eight years old interacted with a humanoid robot known as Nao as it tried to teach them simple English words for shapes such as “circle,” “square” or “heart.”
The key discovery, according to the report, was finding out that the kids became more engaged with the robot as it made mistakes that they could recognize and try to correct. “When the robot got a shape wrong, the child could teach the robot how to draw it correctly by guiding its hand. The robot then either ‘learned’ the English word for that shape or continued to make mistakes,” the report explains, adding that “Matsuzoe and Tanaka found that the children did best when the robot appeared to learn from them.”
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Later the article explains:
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The basic idea behind the robot theory is a simple one, and not an uncommon one in educational theory; by allowing the child to feel more in control of the situation and responsible for teaching the robot, it’s empowering the child and reinforcing the value of the lesson that they are now passing on, but in such a way that it doesn’t feel like a learning experience.
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Kind of cool.