Cynthia Breazeal

Professor of Media Arts and Sciences; MIT Dean for Digital Learning
Publication

Dr. R.O. Bott Will See You Now: Exploring AI for Wellbeing with Middle School Students

Williams, R.; and Breazeal, C. 2023. Dr. R.O. Bott Will See You Now: Exploring AI for Wellbeing with Middle School Students. In Proceedings of the 13th Symposium on Education Advances in Artificial Intelligence (EAAI ’24). AAAI, Menlo Park, CA, USA.

Publication

Impact.AI: Democratizing AI through K-12 Artificial Intelligence Education

Williams, R. (2024) Impact.AI: Democratizing AI through K-12 artificial intelligence education. [Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology].

Publication

Unveiling Voices: Boston Students' Data Activism Journey with Community Catalysts

R. Walker, S. Brady, O. Dias, A. Castillo, K. Asfaw, E. Johnson, M. Taylor, and C. Breazeal , "Unveiling Voices: Boston Students' Data Activism Journey with Community Catalysts," in Black Issues in Computing Education Symposium 2024, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 2024

Publication

Designing Conversational Agents for Emotional Self-Awareness

J. Shen, K. Lecamwasam, H. W. Park, C. Breazeal and R. Picard, "Designing Conversational Agents for Emotional Self-Awareness," 2023 11th International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction Workshops and Demos (ACIIW), Cambridge, MA, USA, 2023, pp. 1-4, doi: 10.1109/ACIIW59127.2023.10388072.

Publication

Algorithmic Rights and Protections for Children

Ito, Mizuko, Remy Cross, Karthik Dinakar, and Candice Odgers. "Algorithmic Rights and Protections for Children." MIT Press.

Publication

Impact.AI: Democratizing AI through K-12 Artificial Intelligence Education

Williams, Randi. Impact.AI: democratizing AI through K-12 artificial intelligence education. Dissertation Proposal. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2023.

Publication

AI + Ethics Curricula for Middle School Youth: Lessons Learned from Three Project‑Based Curricula

Williams, R., Ali, S., Devasia, N. et al. AI + Ethics Curricula for Middle School Youth: Lessons Learned from Three Project-Based Curricula. Int J Artif Intell Educ (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40593-022-00298-y

Publication

Escape!bot. Social Robots as Creative Problem-solving Partners

Ali, S., Devasia, N. E., & Breazeal, C. (2022, June). Escape! Bot: Social Robots as Creative Problem-Solving Partners. In Creativity and Cognition (pp. 275-283). 🏆 Paper received honorable mention award!

Publication

Computational Thinking Education in K–12

Harold Abelson and Siu-Cheung Kong. Computational Thinking Education in K–12. MIT Press, May 2022.

Publication

Mixed-Method Long-Term Robot Usage: Older Adults’ Lived Experience of Social Robots

Ostrowski, A. K., Breazeal, C., & Park, H.W. (2022, March). Mixed-Method Long-Term Robot Usage: Older Adults’ Lived Experience of Social Robots. In Proceedings of the 2022 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction.

Publication

HRI Pioneers: Design Justice for Robot Design and Policy Making

Ostrowski, A. K. & Breazeal, C. (2022, March). Design Justice for Robot Design and Policy Making. In Proceedings of the 2022 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction.

Publication

Children's Perspectives of Advertising with Social Robots: a Policy Investigation

DiPaola, D., Ostrowski, A. K., Spiegel, R., Darling, K., & Breazeal, C. (2022, March). Children's Perspectives of Advertising with Social Robots: a Policy Investigation. In Proceedings of the 2022 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction.

Publication

Speed Dating with Voice User Interfaces: Understanding How Families Interact and Perceive Voice User Interfaces in a Group Setting

Ostrowski, A. K., Fu, J., Zygouras, V., Park, H. W., & Breazeal, C. Speed Dating with Voice User Interfaces (VUIs): Understanding How Families Interact and Perceive VUIs in a Group Setting. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 375.

Publication

Personal Narratives in Technology Design: The Value of Sharing Older Adults’ Stories in the Design of Social Robots

Ostrowski, A. K., Harrington, C.N., Breazeal, C., & Park, H. W. (2021). Personal Narratives in Technology Design: The Value of Sharing Older Adults' Stories in the Design of Social Robots. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 315.

Publication

Long-Term Co-Design Guidelines: Empowering Older Adults as Co-Designers of Social Robots

Ostrowski, A. K., Breazeal. C., & Park, H. W. (2021, August). Long-Term Co-Design Guidelines: Empowering Older Adults as Co-Designers of Social Robots. In 30th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication.

Publication

Lifelong Personalization via Gaussian Process Modeling for Long-Term HRI

Spaulding S, Shen J, Park HW, Breazeal C. Lifelong Personalization via Gaussian Process Modeling for Long-Term HRI. Front Robot AI. 2021;8. doi:10.3389/frobt.2021.683066

Publication

Exploring Generative Models with Middle School Students

Safinah Ali, Daniella DiPaola, Irene Lee, Jenna Hong, and Cynthia Breazeal. 2021. Exploring Generative Models with Middle School Students. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '21), May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan. ACM, New York, NY, USA 13 Pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445226

Publication

Towards Transferrable Personalized Student Models in Educational Games

Spaulding, S., Shen, J., Park, H., & Breazeal, C. (2021, May). Towards Transferrable Personalized Student Models in Educational Games. In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (pp. 1245-1253).

Publication

Exploring Generative Models with Middle School Students

Ali, S., DiPaola, D., Lee, I., Hong, J., & Breazeal, C. (2021, May). Exploring Generative Models with Middle School Students. In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-13).

Publication

What are GANs?: Introducing Generative Adversarial Networks to Middle School Students

Ali, S., DiPaola, D., & Breazeal, C. (2021, May). What are GANs?: Introducing Generative Adversarial Networks to Middle School Students. In Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (Vol. 35, No. 17, pp. 15472-15479).

Publication

Small Group Interactions with Voice-User Interfaces: Exploring Social Embodiment, Rapport, and Engagement

Ostrowski, A. K., Zygouras, V., Park, H. W., & Breazeal, C. (2021, March). Small Group Interactions with Voice-User Interfaces: Exploring Social Embodiment, Rapport, and Engagement. In Proceedings of the 2021 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (pp. 322-331).

Publication

Practical Guidelines for Intent Recognition: BERT with Minimal Training Data Evaluated in Real-World HRI Application

Huggins, Matthew, et al. "Practical Guidelines for Intent Recognition: BERT with Minimal Training Data Evaluated in Real-World HRI Application." Proceedings of the 2021 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. 2021.

Publication

Teacher Perspectives on How to Train Your Robot, A Middle School AI and Ethics Curriculum

Williams, R., Kaputsos, S.P., Breazeal, C. Teacher Perspectives on How to Train Your Robot, A Middle School AI and Ethics Curriculum. Proceedings of the 10th Symposium on Education Advances in Artificial Intelligence (EAAI ’21). 2021.

Publication

Design Research in HRI: Roboticists, Design Features, and Users as Co-Designers

Ostrowski, A.K., Breazeal, C., & Park, H.W. 2020. Design research in HRI: Roboticists, design features, and users as co-designers. IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication 2021 Workshop on Designerly HRI Knowledge

Publication

Toward Designing User-centered Idle Behaviors for Social Robots in the Home

Arias, Kika., Jeong, Sooyeon., Park, Hae Won., Breazeal, Cynthia., "Toward Designing User-centered Idle Behaviors for Social Robots in the Home.", 1st international workshop on Designerly HRI Knowledge. Held in conjunction with the 29th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2020)

Publication

A Robotic Positive Psychology Coach to Improve College Students’ Wellbeing

Jeong, Sooyeon, et al. "A Robotic Positive Psychology Coach to Improve College Students’ Wellbeing." Proceedings of the 29th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (Ro-Man 2020) **Best Paper Award**

Publication

How to Train Your Robot: A Middle School AI and Ethics Curriculum

Williams, R., & Breazeal, C. (2020). How to Train Your Robot: A Middle School AI and Ethics Curriculum. . Presented in the International Workshop on Education in Artificial Intelligence K-12 (EDUAI ’20).

Publication

Promoting Wellbeing with Sunny, a Chatbot that Facilitates Positive Messages between Members of Social Groups

Narain, J.*, Quach, T.*, Davey, M.*, Park, H., Braezeal, C., and Picard, R. "Promoting Wellbeing with Sunny, a Chatbot that Facilitates Positive Messages within Social Groups". Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Accepted. *Equal Contribution.

Publication

Impact of Interaction Context on the Student Affect-Learning Relationship in Child-Robot Interaction

Huili Chen, Hae Won Park, Xiajie Zhang, and Cynthia Breazeal. 2020. Impact of Interaction Context on the Student Affect-Learning Relationship in Child-Robot Interaction. In Proceedings of the 2020 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI ’20) https://doi.org/10.1145/3319502.3374822

Publication

Constructionism, Ethics, and Creativity: Developing Primary and Middle School Artificial Intelligence Education

Ali, S., Williams, R., Payne B., Park H., Breazeal C. (2019) Constructionism, Ethics, and Creativity: Developing Primary and Middle School Artificial Intelligence Education. Presented in the International Workshop on Education in Artificiation Intelligence K-12 (EDUAI ’19). Palo Alto, CA, USA. Proceedings of IJCAI 2019.

Publication

Social Robots for Hospitalized Children

Logan, Deirdre, et al. "Social Robots for Hospitalized Children." Pediatrics 143.6 (2019).

Publication

Assessing Children's Perception and Acceptance of a Social Robot

Kory-Westlund, J. M., & Breazeal, C. (2019). Assessing Children's Perception and Acceptance of a Social Robot. Proceedings of the 18th ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference (IDC) (pp. 38-50). ACM: New York, NY.

Publication

A is for Artificial Intelligence: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence Activities on Young Children’s Perceptions of Robots

Randi Williams, Hae Won Park, and Cynthia Breazeal. 2019. A is for Artificial Intelligence. In Proceedings of the 2019 Conference on Human Factors in Computing (CHI ’19). ACM, New York, NY, USA.

Publication

Older Adults Living With Social Robots: Promoting Social Connectedness in Long-Term Communities

Ostrowski, A.K., DiPaola, D., Partridge E., Park, H.W., & Breazeal, C. (2019). Older Adults Living with Social Robots: Promoting Social Connectedness in Long-Term Communities. IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine. doi: 10.1109/MRA.2019.2905234

Publication

Machine behaviour

Rahwan, Iyad, Manuel Cebrian, Nick Obradovich, Josh Bongard, Jean-François Bonnefon, Cynthia Breazeal, Jacob W. Crandall, et al. “Machine Behaviour.” Nature 568, no. 7753 (April 2019): 477. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1138-y.

Publication

Personalized Estimation of Engagement from Videos Using Active Learning with Deep Reinforcement Learning

Rudovic, O., Park, H-W., Busche, J., Schuller, B. , Breazeal, C., Picard, R. W., " Personalized Estimation of Engagement from Videos Using Active Learning with Deep Reinforcement Learning," IEEE CVPR -AMFG W, June 2019.

Publication

Designing Social Robots for Older Adults

Breazeal, Cynthia L. , Ostrowski, Anastasia K., Singh, N., & Park, Hae Won. (2019). Designing social robots for older adults. National Academy of Engineering The Bridge, 49 (1), 22-31.

Publication

PopBots: Designing an Artificial Intelligence Curriculum for Early Childhood Education

Randi Williams, Hae Won Park, Lauren Oh, and Cynthia Breazeal. 2019. PopBots: Designing an Artificial Intelligence Curriculum for Early Childhood Education. In Proceedings of the 9th Symposium on Education Advances in Artificial Intelligence (EAAI '19). AAAI, Menlo Park, CA, USA.

Publication

A Social Robot System for Modeling Children's Word Pronunciation

Spaulding, S., Chen, H., Ali, S., Kulinski, M., & Breazeal, C. (2018, July). A Social Robot System for Modeling Children's Word Pronunciation: Socially Interactive Agents Track. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (pp. 1658-1666). International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems.

Publication

Can Children Learn Creativity from a Social Robot?

Ali, S., Moroso, T., Breazeal, C. (2019). Can Children Learn Creativity from a Social Robot? In Proceedings of ACM Creativity and Cognition 2019.

Publication

The Use of Social Robots for Social Emotional Communication within Families with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Ali, S., Breazeal, C. (2018). The Use of Social Robots for Social Emotional Communication within Families with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Play Make Learn

Publication

“My Doll Says It's OK”: A Study of Children's Conformity to a Talking Doll

Randi Williams, Christian Vazquez, Stefania Druga, Pattie Maes, Cynthia Breazeal. “My Doll Says It's OK: Voice-Enabled Toy Influences Children's Moral Decisions.” IDC. 2018

Publication

How smart are the smart toys?: Children’s and parents’ attributions of intelligence to computational objects

Stefania Druga, Randi Williams, Hae Won Park, Cynthia Breazeal. "How smart are the smart toys?: Children’s and parents’ attributions of intelligence to computational objects.” IDC. 2018

Publication

Measuring Young Children’s Long-Term Relationships with Social Robots

Kory Westlund, J. M., Park, H., Williams, R., & Breazeal, C. (2018). Measuring Young Children’s Long-term Relationships with Social Robots. In Proceedings of the 17th ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference (IDC). ACM: New York, NY.

Publication

Huggable: The Impact of Embodiment on Promoting Socio-emotional Interactions for Young Pediatric Inpatients

Jeong, Sooyeon, et al. "Huggable: The Impact of Embodiment on Promoting Socio-emotional Interactions for Young Pediatric Inpatients." Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 2018.

Publication

Dormio: Interfacing with Dreams

Haar Horowitz, Adam, Ishaan Grover, Pedro Reynolds-Cuéllar, Cynthia Breazeal, and Pattie Maes. "Dormio: Interfacing with dreams." In Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1-10. 2018.

Publication

P2PSTORY: Dataset of Children Storytelling and Listening in Peer-to-Peer Interactions

Nikhita Singh, Jin Joo Lee, Ishaan Grover, and Cynthia Breazeal (2018). P2PSTORY: Dataset of Children Storytelling and Listening in Peer-to-Peer Interactions. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Publication

Measuring Children's Long-Term Relationships with Social Robots

Kory Westlund, J. M., Park, H. W.., Wiliams, R., & Breazeal, C. (2017). Measuring Children’s Long-Term Relationships with Social Robots. Workshop on Perception and Interaction dynamics in Child-Robot Interaction, held in conjunction with the Robotics: Science and Systems XIII.

Publication

A Bayesian Theory of Mind Approach to Nonverbal Communication for Human-Robot Interactions

Jin Joo Lee. A Bayesian Theory of Mind Approach to Nonverbal Communication for Human-Robot Interactions. PhD Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2017.

Publication

Children use non-verbal cues to learn new words from robots as well as people

Kory Westlund., J. M., Dickens, L., Jeong, S., Harris, P. L., DeSteno, D., & Breazeal, C. L. (2017). Children use non-verbal cues to learn new words from robots as well as people. International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction.

Publication

Backchannel Opportunity Prediction for Social Robot Listeners

HW Park, M Gelsomini, JJ Lee, T Zhu, and C Breazeal (2017). Backchannel Opportunity Prediction for Social Robot Listeners. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).

Publication

Growing Growth Mindset with a Social Robot Peer

Hae Won Park, Rinat Rosenberg-Kima, Maor Rosenberg, Goren Gordon, and Cynthia Breazeal. 2017. Growing Growth Mindset with a Social Robot Peer. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI '17). ACM, New York

Publication

Telling Stories to Robots: The Effect of Backchanneling on a Child's Storytelling

Hae Won Park, Mirko Gelsomini, Jin Joo Lee, and Cynthia Breazeal. 2017. Telling Stories to Robots: The Effect of Backchanneling on a Child's Storytelling. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI '17).

Publication

Toward Robotic Companions that Enhance Psychological Wellbeing with Smartphone Technology

Jeong, Sooyeon, and Cynthia Breazeal. "Toward Robotic Companions that Enhance Psychological Wellbeing with Smartphone Technology." Proceedings of the Companion of the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. ACM, 2017.

Publication

Improving Smartphone Users’ Affect and Wellbeing with Personalized Positive Psychology Interventions

Jeong, Sooyeon, and Cynthia Lynn Breazeal. "Improving Smartphone Users' Affect and Wellbeing with Personalized Positive Psychology Interventions." Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Human Agent Interaction. ACM, 2016.

Publication

Towards visual learning through robotic interaction alone: the joint guided search task.

DePalma, N., Breazeal, C.

Publication

Affect-aware Student Models for Robot Tutors.

Spaulding, S., Gordon, G., Breazeal, C.

Publication

Lessons From Teachers on Performing HRI Studies with Young Children in Schools

Kory Westlund, J. M., Gordon, G., Spaulding, S., Lee, J., Plummer, L., Martinez, M., Das, M., & Breazeal, C. (2016). Lessons From Teachers on Performing HRI Studies with Young Children in Schools. In S. Sabanovic, A. Paiva, Y. Nagai, & C. Bartneck. Proceedings of the 11th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (Christchurch, New Zealand).

Publication

A Study to Measure Effects of Framing a Robot as a Social Agent or as a Machine on Children's Social Behavior

Kory Westlund, J. M., Martinez, M., Archie, M., Das, M., & Breazeal, C. (2016). A Study to Measure Effects of Framing a Robot as a Social Agent or as a Machine on Children's Social Behavior. In S. Sabanovic, A. Paiva, Y. Nagai, & C. Bartneck, Proceedings of the 11th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction: Late-Breaking Reports (pp. 459-460).

Publication

Transparency, teleoperation, and children's understanding of social robots

Kory Westlund, J. M., & Breazeal, C. (2016). Transparency, teleoperation, and children’s understanding of social robots. In S. Sabanovic, A. Paiva, Y. Nagai, & C. Bartneck, Proceedings of the 11th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction: The 11th Annual Human-Robot Interaction Pioneers Workshop, (pp. 625-626). IEEE.

Publication

Tega, A Social Robot

Kory Westlund, J. M., Lee, J., Plummer, L., Faridia, F., Gray, J., Berlin, M., Quintus-Bosz, H., Harmann, R., Hess, M., Dyer, S., dos Santos, K., Adalgeirsson, S., Gordon, G., Spaulding, S., Martinez, M., Das, M., Archie, M., Jeong, S., & Breazeal, C. (2016). Tega: A Social Robot. In Proceedings of the 11th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction: Video Presentations.

Publication

Young children treat robots as informants

Breazeal, C., Harris, P., DeSteno, D., Kory, J., Dickens, L., & Jeong, S. (2016). Young children treat robots as informants. Topics in Cognitive Science, pp. 1-11.