Automated Pitch Convergence Improves Learning in a Social, Teachable Robot for Middle School Mathematics

Pedagogical agents have the potential to provide not only cognitive support to learners but socio-emotional support through social behavior. Socio-emotional support can be a critical element to a learner’s success, influencing their self-efficacy and motivation. Several social behaviors have been explored with pedagogical agents including facial expressions, movement, and social dialogue; social dialogue has especially been shown to positively influence interactions. In this work, we explore the role of paraverbal social behavior or social behavior in the form of paraverbal cues such as tone of voice and intensity. To do this, we focus on the phenomenon of entrainment, where individuals adapt their paraverbal features of speech to one another. Paraverbal entrainment in human-human studies has been found to be correlated with rapport and learning. In a study with 72 middle school students, we evaluate the effects of entrainment with a teachable robot, a pedagogical agent that learners teach how to solve ratio problems. We explore how a teachable robot which entrains and introduces social dialogue influences rapport and learning; we compare with two baseline conditions: a social condition, in which the robot speaks socially, and a non-social condition, in which the robot neither entrains nor speaks socially. We find that a robot that does entrain and speaks socially results in significantly more learning.