Robot-mediated interviews: Does a robotic interviewer impact question difficulty and information recovery?

Our previous research has shown that children respond to a robotic interviewer very similar compared to a human interviewer, pointing towards the prospect of using robot-mediated interviews in situations where human interviewers face certain challenges. This follow-up study investigated how 20 children (aged between 7 and 9) respond to questions of varying difficulty from a robotic interviewer compared to a human interviewer. Each child participated in two interviews, one with an adult and one with a humanoid robot called KASPAR, the main questions in these interviews focused on the theme of pets and animals. After each interview the children were asked to rate the difficulty of the questions and particular aspects of the experience. Measures include the behavioural coding of the children's behaviour during the interviews, the transcripts of what the children said and questionnaire data. The results from quantitative data analysis reveal that the children interacted with KASPAR in a very similar manner to how they interacted with the human interviewer, and provided both interviewers with similar information and amounts of information regardless of question difficulty.