Exploring child engagement in a multi-robot tutor-peer learning scenario

The use of social robots in education has increasingly focused on how different role framings, such as tutor, peer, or novice, shape children's engagement and learning. However, most studies employ a single robot whose role is manipulated behaviourally (e.g., the same robot is used to act either as a peer or as a tutor), leaving open the question of how children respond when multiple, physically distinct robots adopt complementary roles within the same session.

In this exploratory feasibility study, we introduce a blue multi-robot learning environment in which one robot acts as a tutor and the other as a novice peer. The robots supported an early word-learning task in which children learned novel object names and were later asked to name or identify them. In the proposed scenario, participants were exposed to novel words assigned to unusual or unconventional objects (e.g., dog toys and shapes made with interlocking disks), alongside familiar objects. After an initial training phase, children were asked to locate or name the novel items. Sixteen children aged 4-5 years interacted with both robots while their attention, affect, and engagement behaviours were recorded. The study characterised children's distribution of attention during a word-learning task involving a tutor and a novice peer robot, including attention to task-relevant objects and robots and its relation to attentional complexity, affect, and engagement, as well as the relation between individual characteristics (language ability, age, and media exposure) and task performance, measured as correct naming or pointing during recall.

Children consistently attended to task-relevant objects throughout the session, with attention distributed across objects and robots in structured patterns. Attentional complexity co-occurred with sustained engagement and positive affect. Task performance and engagement showed little variation with age or media exposure, while baseline language ability was negatively associated with recall performance.

Overall, the findings indicate that a multi-robot learning configuration is feasible and capable of supporting sustained engagement and structured attentional behaviour in young children. While the results are exploratory and limited by sample size, they provide initial evidence that complementary robot roles can be meaningfully integrated within early learning activities and motivate further systematic investigation.