Exploring Children’s Choices in an Educational Game on Neurodiversity: Reveiling Underlying Values through Robot’s Socratic Questioning

Abstract

In the Netherlands, there is a shortage ofprimary school teachers, due to this shortage, teachers often do not ahave a lotof one-on-one time with the students. A social robot could be the solution tocreating more one-on-“one” time with the students. In addition to relievingsome workload for the teachers, a social robot could assist in gaining insightinto personal values. Gaining insight into personal values can contribute tothe learning experience by increasing motivation. The value awareness of thechildren is the learning objective as value awareness is thought to increasethe child’s competence and motivation. One of the options to gain insight intocontextual values is Socratic Questioning. These questions are created tofurther the learning experience and are expected to increase value awareness.This thesis investigates how a social robot can assist children in attaininglearning goals, reflecting on these goals, and exploring the decisions andvalues underlying their learning experiences related to neurodiversity. Theeffectiveness of the robot in achieving learning objectives, encouragingreflection on decisions and gaining insight into personal moral values isshown. To gain insight into personal values, two methods of SocraticQuestioning have been compared; Clarification and Implications &Consequences. The participating children of this thesis play an educationalgame where moral dilemmas are presented. A social robot assists in the game andasks the Socratic Questions. The explanation to the Clarification has proven tobe the most effective method out of the two to gain insight into moral values.Moreover, the interaction effect between question type and time shows that theimpact of the question type on insight into values varies with the time aquestion is asked. Qualitative observations show the participants’ anticipationof the robot’s questions and show instances where responses are different fromthe self-reported value importance. Overall, this research sheds light on the potentialof Socratic Questioning and its uses for understanding individual values,calling for further exploration in this area.