The Influence of Robot’s Expressions on Self-Efficacy in Erroneous Situations

Abstract

Social robots are increasingly being adopted as companions in educational scenarios. Self-efficacy, a viable construct for comprehending performance, particularly on academic tasks, has lately received great attention. In this study, participants completed four sections of the Wisconsin Card-Sorting Task (WCST) with a social robot Kebbi. The robot performed four kinds of expressions consisting of different combinations of Laban-theory-based motion with a positive voice designed to point out the mistakes the participant made. The impressions of the robot were reported in the post-experimental questionnaires while the bio-signals of the participant including heart rate and brainwave were collected by wearable devices. The results demonstrated that the participants tended to find the robot with the designed motion more likable, and they were less likely to feel frustrated and experienced lower levels of stress when the robot communicated with motion and voice simultaneously.