Abstract
The fundamentals of verbal communication skills are developed during childhood, and existing studies pinpoint the benefits of stimulating language and expression skills from an early age. Our research is a preliminary evaluation of conversational technology to support this process. In this paper, we describe the design process of a speech-based conversational agent for children, which involved a Wizard-of-Oz empirical study with 20 primary school children aged 9–10 y.o. in order to identify the design guidelines for the automated version of the system. Our agent is called ISI, is integrated into a web application and exploits oral and visual interaction modes. ISI enables children to practice verbal skills related to the description of a person’s physical characteristics. It provides opportunities for them to learn and use words and linguistic constructs. Also, ISI permits to develop their body awareness and self-expression (when describing their self) or the attention to “the other” (when describing someone else). ISI engages users in a speech-based conversational flow composed of two main repeated steps. It talks to the children and stimulates them with questions about a specific part of their body (e.g., “What color is your hair?”). When the users describe the required feature adequately, ISI provides a cheerful real-time visual representation of the answer; otherwise, it provides hints.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Graphic Organizers: A Review of Scientifically Based Research. The Institute for the Advancement of Research in Education at AEL (2003)
Al Moubayed, S., Lehman, J.: Toward better understanding of engagement in multiparty spoken interaction with children. In: Proceedings of the ACM ICMI 2015 (2015)
Barbe, W.B., Milone, M.N.: What we know about modality strengths (1981)
Barbe, W., et al.: Teaching Through Modality Strengths: Concepts and Practices (1979)
Begany, G., et al.: Factors affecting user perception of a spoken language vs. textual search interface: a content analysis. Interact. Comput. 28, 170–180 (2015)
Benveniste, S., et al.: Designing improvisation for mediation in group music therapy with children suffering from behavioral disorders. In: Proceedings of the IDC 2009 (2009)
Catania, F., et al.: Automatic speech recognition: Do emotions matter? In: 2019 IEEE International Conference on Conversational Data and Knowledge Engineering (2019)
Catania, F., et al.: What is the best action for children to “wake up” and “put to sleep” a conversational agent? a multi-criteria decision analysis approach. In: Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces. ACM (2020)
Celi: Voice assistants: Celi’s research reveals the habits of Italians (2019). shorturl.at/gvCS6
Coffield, F., et al.: Learning styles and pedagogy in post 16 education: a critical and systematic review (2004)
Cole, R., et al.: How marni teaches children to read. Educational Technology (2007)
Costantino, M.A.: Costruire libri e storie con la CAA: gli IN-Books per l’intervento precoce e linclusione. Erickson (2011)
Council, N.R., et al.: From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development. National Academies Press, Washington, D.C. (2000)
DeepAI: Conversational agent (2019). shorturl.at/gsADL
Doswell, J.T.: Pedagogical embodied conversational agent. In: IEEE ICALT 2004 (2004)
Druga, S., et al.: Hey google is it ok if i eat you?: initial explorations in child-agent interaction. In: IDC Conference (2017)
Eğeci, İ.S., Gençöz, T.: Factors associated with relationship satisfaction: importance of communication skills. Contemp. Family Ther. 28, 383–391 (2006)
Eskenazi, M.: Using automatic speech processing for foreign language pronunciation tutoring: some issues and a prototype. Lang. Learn. Technol. 2(2), 62–76 (1999)
Forbes: How artificial intelligence is making chatbots better for businesses, May 2018. shorturl.at/koFU2
Gartner: 25% of customer service operations will use virtual customer assistants by 2020 (2018). www.gtnr.it/2MHVDG3
Garvey, C., Berninger, G.: Timing and turn taking in children’s conversations. Discourse Process. 4, 27–57 (1981)
Glasser, A.: Automatic speech recognition services: deaf and hard-of-hearing usability. In: The 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (2019)
Google: What is conversation design? (2019). shorturl.at/byJL9
Hassani, K., Lee, W.S.: Visualizing natural language descriptions: a survey (2016). www.pewrsr.ch/2l4wQnr. Accessed 16 Oct 10 2019
Hassani, K., et al.: Design and implementation of an intelligent virtual environment for improving speaking and listening skills. ILE 24, 252–271 (2016)
Hayashi, Y.: Multiple pedagogical conversational agents to support learner-learner collaborative learning: effects of splitting suggestion types. CSR 54, 246–257 (2019)
Kerry, A., Ellis, R., Bull, S.: Conversational agents in e-learning. In: Allen, T., Ellis, R., Petridis, M. (eds.) Applications and Innovations in Intelligent Systems XVI, pp. 169–182. Springer, London (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-215-3_13
Levinson, S.C., Torreira, F.: Timing in turn-taking and its implications for processing models of language. Front. Psychol. 6, 731 (2015)
Li, J., et al.: An overview of noise-robust automatic speech recognition. IEEE/ACM Trans. Audio Speech Lang. Process. 22, 745–777 (2014)
Light, J., Drager, K.: AAC technologies for young children with complex communication needs: state of the science and future research directions. AAC 23, 204–216 (2007)
Limerick, H., et al.: Empirical evidence for a diminished sense of agency in speech interfaces (2015)
Lippmann, R.P.: Speech recognition by machines and humans. Speech Commun. 22, 1–15 (1997)
Lobe, M., Fritsch, R.: Das Kleine Ich Bin Ich Und Das Kleine Hokuspokus. Jumbo Neue Medien (2012)
Massaro, D.W.: Embodied agents in language learning for children with language challenges. In: Miesenberger, K., Klaus, J., Zagler, W.L., Karshmer, A.I. (eds.) ICCHP 2006. LNCS, vol. 4061, pp. 809–816. Springer, Heidelberg (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/11788713_118
Massaro, D., et al.: A multilingual embodied conversational agent. In: Proceedings of the 38th HICSS Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2005)
Moore, R.J., et al.: Conversational UX design. In: ACM CHI 2017 (2017)
Mozilla: Websocket. shorturl.at/KMS27 (2019). Accessed 03 Feb 2020
Mueller, G.A.: Visual contextual cues and listening comprehension: an experiment. Mod. Lang. J. 64, 335–340 (1980)
Murad, C., et al.: Design guidelines for hands-free speech interaction. In: Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services Adjunct (2018)
Nielsen, J.: UX Design for Children (Ages 3–12). Nielsen Norman Group (2010)
Nielsen, J.: 10 usability heuristics for user interface design. NNG 1(1) (1995)
Oviatt, S.: Ten myths of multimodal interaction. Commun. ACM 42(11), 74–81 (1999)
Park, H.W., et al.: Telling stories to robots: the effect of backchanneling on a child’s storytelling. In: HRI 2017 (2017)
Potamianos, A., et al.: Automatic speech recognition for children. In: Fifth European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology (1997)
Read, J.C., MacFarlane, S.: Using the fun toolkit and other survey methods to gather opinions in child computer interaction. In: IDC 2006, New York, NY, USA (2006)
Read, J.C., et al.: Endurability, engagement and expectations: measuring children’s fun (2002)
Sanjanaashree, P., et al.: Language learning for visual and auditory learners using scratch toolkit. In: CCI International Conference (2014)
Schmidt, C.R., Paris, S.G.: The development of verbal communicative skills in children. In: Advances in Child Development and Behavior, vol. 18. Elsevier (1984)
Snap: Libmoji (2018). wwww.github.com/matthewnau/libmoji
Sun, M., et al.: Collaborative storytelling between robot and child: a feasibility study. In: Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Interaction Design and Children (2017)
Urrutia, E.K.M., et al.: A first proposal of pedagogic conversational agents to develop computational thinking in children. In: TEEM Conference (2017)
Wiggins, J., et al.: Conversational UX design for kids: toward learning companions. In: Proceedings of the Conversational UX Design CHI 2017 Workshop (2017)
Willingham, D.T., et al.: The scientific status of learning styles theories. Teach. Psychol. 42, 266–271 (2015)
Xu, D.: Tangible user interface for children-an overview. In: Proceedings of the UCLAN Department of Computing Conference (2005)
Xu, D.: Design and evaluation of tangible interfaces for primary school children. In: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (2007)
Acknowledgements
This work is partially funded by EIT Digital - Project LETSSAY “Conversational Technology for Speech and Language Therapy”.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Catania, F., Spitale, M., Cosentino, G., Garzotto, F. (2021). Conversational Agents to Promote Children’s Verbal Communication Skills. In: Følstad, A., et al. Chatbot Research and Design. CONVERSATIONS 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12604. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68288-0_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68288-0_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-68287-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-68288-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)