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Cassell et al., "Shared Reality: Physical Collaboration
with a Virtual Peer"
Adrienne DeWolfe
-Virtual peers seem to have many potential applications. Although the
focus of Sam is to encourage collaborative storytelling play, I wonder
about the potential for teaching social skills and cooperation. As a teacher,
I know that children are coming to school with less experience at cooperation
and self amusement in play, especially in larger groups of 3 or more children
(I believe this is due to parents allowing less unstructured neighborhood
time). Children are very accustomed to having play and free time structured
for them, and often seem unable to invent activities for themselves and
their peers to engage. They particularly have a hard time on the playground
with big groups to play a game; they are stifled by argument and an inability
to resolve conflict on their own without adult intervention. As a result,
the classroom is taking on more responsibility in teaching cooperative
group skills. Do you think that virtual peers would help or hinder the
acquisition of cooperative group skills and the ability to self entertain?
Stephanie K. Dalquist
-There are often discussions as to how well children can distinguish between
fantasy and reality (especially in relation to video games, violence,
etc.). Would a setup in which the objects can exist in both the real and
virtual worlds confuse this issue even more?
-How convincing does Sam have to be as a simulated peer?
-How well does this work/ are there any plans to make this work in a cross
cultural or multilingual format, since it will be difficult to depend
on the same verbal cues for all cultures?
Hilarie Claire Tomasiewicz
-"Animated characters are familiar to children, current versions of children's
animation encourage children to be passive consumers of narrative rather
than actual producers of their own stories." Do you agree with this?
-Even before the advent of such 'virtual alternatives' as SAM, do you
feel that children's animations have always encouraged children to be
passive consumers of narrative? What about Charlie Brown as an example
of an animation for children?
Walter Dan Stiehl
-From user testing, what effect has the fact that SAM is an animated projection,
had upon the play-pattern of the children. Since play is very much tactile
based, especially in young children, have you noticed a difference in
the play pattern of a child with SAM versus the play-pattern of a normal
human child? Have you also thought of sensing up SAM, i.e. with a touch
screen or other type of sensor, so that the child can actually touch SAM
in the process of determining their playmate's existence? Granted this
would be for a much younger child than today's digital 6 or 7 year old.
David Spitz
-What are the differences between collaborative play with other children
and collaborative play with Sam? What types of play is Sam "better" at
than real-life peers? Does Sam play equally well with all types of children
(eg, shy, outgoing; boy, girl; etc)?
Mike Ananny
-Is the goal of this project to offer an alternative to existing technologies,
determine the characteristics of child-child interactions that are most
"successful" or determine the characteristics of agent-child interactions
that are the most "successful"?
Jennifer Chung
-But this certainly cannot be a substitute for developing real social
skills, right? Sam will never be rude, or mean, or selfish, or all the
negative personality aspects of a "real child" which come into play during
real interactions?
Girim Sung
-Could there be a danger of imposing our present cultural definitions
of play onto children through the virtual peer? (the virtual peer will
represent our current cultural definition of what a child should like
to do--the child should be more active rather than passive, the child
should collaborate, etc)
Char DeCroos
-I'm curious as the what the wide range of applications for SAM are. Of
course one can encourage adults and children to develop stories and through
this learn of the world, learn of language, and thinking skills. Are there
any applications in perhaps virtual teaching of school or procedural things?
"Look mom, I learned to play checkers from Sam!"
Raffi Krikorian
-Is sam supposed to be a companion to the child, or is sam supposed to
be something which is actively attempting to stimulate the child? I guess
this is a subtle difference, but a companion (such as a playmate from
school) has his or her own "agenda" in which the child gets some stimulation
(whether it be intellectual or emotional) from -- however, it is also
possible that sam is merely a program which is attempting to stimulate
the child by proactively modifying its behavior to suit the child. i'm
not sure which one would be "better" for the child, but the former is
obviously more realistic.
Anindita Basu
-How does Sam affect mental representations of the distinction between
fantasy and reality since the play occurs in an almost liminal space between
them with an animate and anthropomorphic front for technology?
Lois Rostow Kuznets, "On the Couch with Calvin, Hobbes,
and Winnie the Pooh"
Adrienne DeWolfe
-So in literature and toy creation there is this history for little boys
to play with stuffed animals that play the role of consoler, stimulator
of imagination, transitional object, and a bridge towards accomodation.
Is there any history of little boys having dolls that played the same
roles? Sure I can come up with G.I. Joe or wrestling characters, but these
dolls come with a play narration with violent/macho "normalizing" aspects.
Is there a history of non-violent dolls for boys? Or is this too gender/sexual
identity scary for parents who of course are the purchasing agents?
Stephanie K. Dalquist
-Given his take on the individualistic nature of Western toys, how has/would
Sutton-Smith react to the current onslaught of electronic interactive
toys? I'm betting he's quite appalled =) Doesn't this solitary play help
in stimulating the children to create narratives?
-Has Sutton-Smith considered any cross cultural comparisons of consumerism/solitary
use of toys?
-Is the author using Hundred Aker Wood as a "transitional country" like
Winnicott used transitional objects?
-As far as women in the series, Calvin and Hobbes also has his mother
and his teacher. They may fit interestingly into the continuing analysis
of women/authority in the essay (55-57).
Hilarie Claire Tomasiewicz
-Could you elaborate on Sutton-Smiths observation that "play is not really
'nice' and often cruel?" How is play cruel? This aspect of play is one
that i do not really understand.
Walter Dan Stiehl
-Do most children today still play with their toys, as Christopher Milne
did with Pooh, i.e. use of a stuffed animal as a transitional object?
Or has today's "intelligent" toy that "thinks" and speaks on its own changed
this? Can today's "interactive" toys ever be a transitional object in
the same way as the "un-intelligent" Pooh?
David Spitz
-What are the implications if indeed our culture encourages a sort of
animism among children? What exactly does animism mean in this context?
Have Mead's findings to the contrary (among animist cultures, paradoxically)
been confirmed?
Max Bajracharya
-How does the relationship of literary figures and their play things translate
to children and theirs? Do children ever make the connection that their
stuffed animals are the same as Hobbes of Winnie the Pooh? Or are Calvin
and Hobbes similar, but children are more likely to associate with Calvin?
Can children really relate with a stuffed animal? Or do they relate their
stuffed animals to them?
Mike Ananny
-How does Sutton-Smith's notion of play with or without objects and play
as a means not of conflict resolution but of conflict generation within
boundaries agree with the idea of toys as transitional objects and eventual
conflict mediators?
Jennifer Chung
-In the absence of a physical toy to take the role of plaything, will
children adopt an imaginary playmate, or transform a non-toy object into
a role similar to those of Pooh and Hobbes? Do kids play with animistic
toys in the same way that they play with imaginary playmates? And (non
sequitur prompted by this piece's mention of mediatic elements assimilated
into children's stories) Mattel presumably doesn't mind children making
up stories involving Barbie, but does mind adults.. assuming the internet
to, in fact, be a really large electronic playground would they run after
kids posting their made-up Barbie stories to the 'net? (Okay, so that's
an intellectual property question..)
Girim Sung
-Why is it that toys are so strongly associated with child's play? Before
taking this class, I thought of play as playing baseball outside until
dusk or going to the park, but not really of toys. Do children these days
spend most of their play time with toys instead of other children?
Char DeCroos
-Is it true that a child "longs for adventure within a very narrow, controllable
range of activity, where death and disorder do not loom and where ...
the child is a god?" I personally think that children are not that adverse
to death and disorder, but being special (child=god) is a crucial component.
Raffi Krikorian
-At what point is the media too much for a child? diana kelly-byrne found
"helen" taking the plots for her playtime from books, comics, movies,
and even television. at what point does too much media begin to stifle
the child's imagination instead of help it?
Carlos Cantu
-Kuznets remarks that, according to Sutton-Smith, both Calvin and Christopher
Robbins use toys that "console, while encouraging creativity." If these
toys encourage individualism, then what toys marketed today display a
more communal approach to problem solving and creativity? And to what
extent do parents expectations feed into this individualistic approach?
Anindita Basu
-Can play be controlled to try to control development? Will certain kinds
of play happen no matter what? Are there types of play that are linked
to development, like they happen cross-culturally (games of tag, hide
and go seek, etc)?
-When do kids stop saying that they're playing and think they're too old
for it? When do they return to wanting to play?
-Isn't analyzing play as a gateway into psychological turmoil risky if
dolls can be used to experiment and act out? Funeral doll play, which
happened in many households, seems morbid and disturbed... would it be
misinterpreted by therapists?
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