Research
Fluid Interfaces

Integrating digital interfaces more naturally into our physical lives, enabling insight, inspiration, and interpersonal connections
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Social Machines

Understanding and empowering human networks
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ML Learning

ML Learning
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Personal Robots

Building socially engaging robots and interactive technologies to help people live healthier lives, connect with others, and learn better
Post Research

Making new (robot) friends

Understanding children's relationships with social robots
Project Research

Relational AI

Creating long-term interpersonal interaction and shared experiences with social robots. Many of our current projects explore the use of s...
Post Research

Making new (robot) friends: Further reading

For the interested reader:If you'd like to learn more about the topics covered in my post,  Making new (robot) friends: Understandin...
Archived
Project Research

Children Use Nonverbal Cues to Learn from Robots

When learning from human partners, infants and young children will pay attention to nonverbal signals, such as gaze and bodily orientatio...
Archived
Archived
Project Research

Storytelling Companion

Children’s oral language skills in preschool can predict their academic success later in life. Helping children improve their language an...
Archived
Archived
Project Research

Robotic Learning Companions

The language and literacy skills of young children entering school are highly predictive of their long-term academic success. Children fr...
Archived
Archived
Project Research

Robot Expressiveness Affects Children's Learning

Prior research with preschool children has established that book reading, especially when children are encouraged to actively process the...
Archived
Project Research

Curious Learning: Understanding Learning Behaviors for Early Literacy

Early literacy plays an important role in a child's future. However, the reality is that over 57 million children have no access to a sch...
Publication Research

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 Research

Flat versus expressive storytelling: young children's learning and retention of a social robot's narrative

Kory Westlund, J., Jeong, S., Park, H. W., Ronfard, S., Adhikari, A., Harris, P. L., David DeSteno, & Breazeal, C. (2017). Flat versus expressive storytelling: young children's learning and retention of a social robot's narrative. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
Publication Research

A Comparison of children learning from robots, tablets, and people

Kory Westlund, J., Dickens, L., Jeong, S., Harris, P., DeSteno, D., & Breazeal, C. (2015). A Comparison of children learning from robots, tablets, and people. In Proceedings of New Friends: The 1st International Conference on Social Robots in Therapy and Education.
Archived
Project Research

Robotic Language Learning Companions

Young children learn language not through listening alone, but through active communication with a social actor. Cultural immersion and c...
Archived
Project Research

WordSense

As more powerful and spatially aware Augmented Reality devices become available, we can leverage the user’s context to embed reality with...
Post Research

They’re having fun… but are they learning?

How can you measure the learning outcomes of play? This has frustrated professionals in the field of early childhood education for years.
Project Research

SpeechBlocks

SpeechBlocks is a self-expressive literacy app that helps young children explore alphabetic principles through manipulating letter blocks...
Project Research

Personalized Robot Storyteller

Can robots collaboratively exchange stories with children and improve their language and storytelling skills? With our latest Tega robot ...