Moderating Group Conversation Dynamics with Social Robots
This work addresses moderation challenges in group conversations for applications like education or therapy, but it is incremental as it builds on existing social robot research.
The study examined how a social robot's addressing policies affect group conversation dynamics, finding that the robot's interventions led to more balanced attention among participants and reduced subgroup formation.
This research investigates the impact of social robot participation in group conversations and assesses the effectiveness of various addressing policies. The study involved 300 participants, divided into groups of four, interacting with a humanoid robot serving as the moderator. The robot utilized conversation data to determine the most appropriate speaker to address. The findings indicate that the robot's addressing policy significantly influenced conversation dynamics, resulting in more balanced attention to each participant and a reduction in subgroup formation.