Gestures vs. Faces: Exploring Emotion Recognition in Child-Robot Interaction

As robots are increasingly integrated into everyday life, their ability to communicate emotions becomes crucial to foster positive human-robot interactions. However, the key factors for the recognition of artificial emotions are still poorly understood. This study explores whether children can better recognize emotions expressed by robots using gestures or by robots using facial expressions. We observed ten five-year-olds and fourteen six-year-olds during an in-the-wild workshop. The results revealed significant differences in emotion recognition based on robot type, age, and emotion. Children who interact with the gesture robot were 90% less likely to accurately recognize emotions than the robot with facial expressions. Six-year-olds demonstrated significantly higher accuracy, with 8.30 times greater chances of recognizing emotions than five-year-olds. Regarding emotion type, children were significantly more likely to identify sadness and happiness correctly than anger. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating facial expressions to aid in emotion recognition and make robots more approachable for young children.