Conversing with children: cartoon and video people elicit similar conversational behaviors

Abstract

Interactive animated characters have the potential to engage and educate children, but there is little research on children's interactions with animated characters and real people. We conducted an experiment with 69 children between the ages of 4 and 10 years to investigate how they might engage in conversation differently if their interactive partner appeared as a cartoon character or as a person. A subset of the participants interacted with characters that displayed exaggerated and damped facial motion. The children completed two conversations with an adult confederate who appeared once as herself through video and once as a cartoon character. We measured how much the children spoke and compared their gaze and gesture patterns. We asked them to rate their conversations and indicate their preferred partner. There was no difference in children's conversation behavior with the cartoon character and the person on video, even among those who preferred the person and when the cartoon exhibited altered motion. These results suggest that children will interact with animated characters as they would another person.