Individual Differences in Children’s (Language) Learning Skills Moderate Effects of Robot-Assisted Second Language Learning

The current study investigated how individual differences among children affect the added value of social robots for teaching second language (L2) vocabulary to young children. Specifically, we moderating role three child characteristics deemed relevant learning: first (L1) knowledge, phonological memory, and selective attention. We expected low in these abilities particularly benefit from being assisted by a robot training. An L2 English training intervention consisting seven sessions was administered 193 monolingual Dutch five-year-old over three- four-week period. Children were randomly assigned one experimental conditions: 1) tablet only, 2) that used deictic (pointing) gestures (the no-iconic-gestures condition), or 3) both iconic (i.e., depicting target word; iconic-gestures condition). There also control condition which did not receive training, but played dancing games with robot. word knowledge measured directly after two four weeks later. In post-tests, conditions outperformed on there no between conditions. Several moderation effects found. robot’s presence benefited larger L1 vocabularies poorer while smaller better memory performed tablet-only condition. than condition, attention Together, results showed its differ across children, should be taken into account when designing evaluating robot-assisted interventions.