This paper describes a study of the effects of mimicry and social praise when used by an artificial social agent. An experiment (N=50) is described which shows that social praise increases the perceived friendliness of a chat-robot, while, mimicry displaying matching behavior enhances the perceived intelligence of the robot. We advice designers to incorporate both mimicry and social praise in t...

Although there is evidence that praise of different types (i.e., generic vs. nongeneric) influences motivation, it is unclear how this occurs. Generic praise (e.g., "You are smart") conveys that a child possesses a trait responsible for their performance, whereas nongeneric praise (e.g., "You worked hard") conveys that performance is effort-based. Because praise conveys the basis for success, p...

Receiving praise is not only rewarding but also informative for learners. It allows them to learn about their skills and competence even when they are uncertain or unable to judge for themselves. Not all praise is equally meaningful, however: praise from someone who praises indiscriminately is less informative than from someone who praises selectively. Do young children understand whose praise ...

The growth of social networking platforms has drawn a lot of attentions to the need for social computing. Social computing utilises human insights for computational tasks as well as design of systems that support social behaviours and interactions. One of the key aspects of social computing is the ability to attribute responsibility such as blame or praise to social events. This ability helps a...

We tested the effects of an observational intervention on the conditioning of praise as a reinforcer with 2-school age and 2-preschool age children for whom vocal praise did not reinforce either performance (the emission of previously learned operants) or learning (the acquisition of new operants). Pre-intervention reversal designs for performance tasks showed praise did not reinforce; similarl...

The nature of the interactions that maintain the social behavior of dogs toward humans and which interactions dogs prefer have not been thoroughly investigated. We focused here on dogs' preference for petting and vocal praise, and the influence that familiarity (owner vs. stranger) has on that preference. We first used concurrent choice to evaluate dogs' preference for petting or vocal praise a...

Studies of irony detection have commonly used ironic criticisms (i.e., mock positive evaluation of negative circumstances) as stimulus materials. Another basic type of verbal irony, ironic praise (i.e., mock negative evaluation of positive circumstances) is largely absent from studies on individuals' aptitude to detect verbal irony. However, it can be argued that ironic praise needs to be consi...

PURPOSE Self-efficacy is related to the emotional functioning and coping skills of an individual and is thought to be a predictor of health behaviors, which are particularly important for pulmonary rehabilitation (PR). To our knowledge, no measure of self-efficacy has been validated to explore behavior changes in the context of PR for patients with COPD in Korea. This study aimed to evaluate th...

Abstract Praise, unlike blame, is generally considered well intended and beneficial, therefore in less need of scrutiny. In line with recent developments, we argue that praise merits more thorough philosophical analysis. We show that, just like can be problematic by expressing a failure to respect person’s equal value or worth as person. Such patronizing praise, however, often insidious, becaus...