Research
Superhero chatbot Zip helps children to develop positive self talk
Freya Lucas
Aug 08, 2023
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Researchers from the University of Washington (UW) have created a new web app aimed to help children develop skills like self-awareness and emotional management which is having promising results.
In Self-Talk with Superhero Zip, a chatbot guided pairs of siblings through lessons. The UW team found that, after speaking with the app for a week, most children could explain the concept of supportive self-talk (the things people say to themselves either audibly or mentally) and apply it in their daily lives. And children who had engaged in negative self-talk before the study were able to turn that habit positive.Findings from the research were shared in June at the 2023 Interaction Design and Children conference. The research aims to contribute to the body of knowledge around how chatbots can help children to effectively acquire socioemotional skills.
"There is room to design child-centric experiences with a chatbot that provide fun and educational practice opportunities without invasive data harvesting that compromises children's privacy," said senior author Associate Professor Alexis Hiniker.
"Over the last few decades, television programs like 'Sesame Street,' 'Mister Rogers,' and 'Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood' have shown that it is possible for TV to help kids cultivate socioemotional skills. We asked: can we make a space where kids can practice these skills in an interactive app? We wanted to create something useful and fun – a 'Sesame Street' experience for a smart speaker."
Their research began with two prototype ideas with the goal to teach socioemotional skills broadly. After testing, they narrowed the scope, focusing on a superhero named Zip and the aim of teaching supportive self-talk. They decided to test the app on siblings, since research shows that children are more engaged when they use technology with another person.
Ten pairs of Seattle-area siblings participated in the study. For a week, they opened the app and met an interactive narrator who told them stories about Zip and asked them to reflect on Zip's encounters with other characters, including a supervillain. During and after the study, the children described applying positive self-talk and several mentioned using it when they were upset or angry.
Having the children work with their siblings supported learning in some cases, but some parents found the children struggling to take turns while using the app.
By the end of the study, all five children who said they used negative self-talk before had replaced it with positive self-talk. The length of these effects isn't clear, researchers note. The study just spanned one week and the tendency for survey participants to respond in ways that make them look good could lead children to speak positively about the app's effects. Future research may include longer studies in more natural settings.
“Our goal is to make the app accessible to a wider audience in the future," explained lead author Chris (Yue) Fu.
"We're exploring the integration of large language models – the systems that power tech like ChatGPT – into our prototype and we plan to work with content creators to adapt existing socioemotional learning materials into our system. The hope is that these will facilitate more prolonged and effective interventions."
Other authors involved in this research are Mingrui Zhang, Lynn K Nguyen, Yifan Lin, Rebecca Michelson, and Tala June Tayebi.
Access the findings here.
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