Personalizing Educational Game Play with a Robot Partner

Personalization of educational and behavioral training to the developmental stage of the individual child is common practice in educational and therapeutic settings. Research on robot-based education training is only just starting to adopt this approach. We present a pilot study on a behavioral intervention design in which Pivotal Response Training (PRT) elements are embedded into a game played by a robot and a child. Seven game levels are designed to cover different levels of communication skills that are targeted by PRT. The levels do not differ with respect to the logical steps in the game that the children should take, only with respect to the social competence that the child has. The behaviors displayed at each stage were observed and analyzed using qualitative and quantitative methods. Our results indicate that the more socially challenging a game is, the happier children are and the more children engage with playing the game, although the game challenge remains the same.