Unlocking Emotions: The Impact of Robot Question-Asking and Reciprocal Sharing on Self-Disclosure during Emotion Learning

Abstract

Social robots can support children's emotional skills development through playful interactions, yet skills like emotional self-disclosure remain underexplored. This study investigates the impact of a social robot designed to encourage emotional self-disclosure during an emotion-identification game with children aged 6-10. In a between-subjects design with 28 participants across two local schools, we compared a Reflective condition, where the robot actively encouraged emotional self-disclosure through question-asking and reciprocal sharing, to a Control condition, where the robot did not. Children in the Reflective condition engaged in emotional self-disclosure when prompted, and showed higher engagement than those in Control. Direct question-asking was more effective than reciprocal self-disclosure. Results suggested that children who perceived the robot as kinder disclosed more, whereas those who viewed it as more real disclosed less. These findings highlight the potential of social robots to foster emotional skills in children and inform the design of future child-robot interaction research.