Abstract
Using synthetic characters to support children’s personal, social and emotional education requires that the emotional response elicited from the children is that desired by educators and stakeholders. This paper discusses an approach to understanding children’s emotional interpretation of character’s behaviour in a complex social situation. We outline this approach based on Theory of Mind concepts, that we have developed to enable us to understand and analyse children’s emotional interpretation of synthetic characters involved in bullying scenarios in a virtual school. We discuss an empirical study of 345 children, aged 8-11 years, and concluded that our approach enabled us to gain a greater understanding of children’s emotional interpretations. Results from the study identified that overall children did make appropriate emotional interpretations of characters and story, highlighting the potential of synthetic characters for exploring personal, social and emotional issues.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Arsenio, W.F., Lemerise, E.A.: Aggression and moral development: Integrating social information processing and moral domain models. Child Development 75, 987–1002 (2004)
Crick, N.R., Grotpeter, J.K.: Relational aggression, gender, and social-psychological adjustment. Child Development 66, 710–722 (1995)
Fischer, A.H.: Gender and emotion: Social psychological perspectives. Cambridge University Press, Paris (2000)
Hall, L., Woods, S., Aylett, R., Paiva, A.: Using Theory of Mind methods to investigate empathic engagement with synthetic characters. International Journal of Humanoid Robotics 3, 351–370 (2006)
Hall, L., Woods, S., Dautenhahn, K.: FearNot! Designing in the Classroom. presented at British HCI, Leeds, UK (2004)
Happe, F., Frith, U.: Theory of mind and social impairment in children with conduct disorder. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 14, 385–398 (1996)
Leslie, L.M.: Pretense and representation: The origins of theory of mind. Psychological Review 94, 412–426 (1987)
Payton, J.W., Wardlaw, D.M., Gracyzk, P.A., Bloodworth, M.R., Tompsett, C.J., Weissberg, R.: Social and Emotional Learning: A Framework for promoting mental health and reducing risk behaviours in children and youth. Journal of School Health 70, 179–185 (2000)
Sutton, J., Smith, P.K., Swettenham, J.: Bullying and ’theory of mind’: A critique of the ’social skills deficit’ view of anti-social behaviour. Social Development 8, 117–127 (1999)
Sutton, J., Smith, P.K., Swettenham, J.: Social cognition and bullying: Social inadequacy or skilled manipulation? British Journal of Developmental Psychology 17, 435–450 (1999)
Wolke, D., Stanford, K.: Bullying in school children. In: Wolke, D., Stanford, K. (eds.) Developmental Psychology, Arnold Publisher, London (1999)
Woods, S., White, E.: The association between bullying behaviour, arousal levels and behaviour problems. Journal of Adolescence 28, 381–395 (2005)
Woods, S., Wolke, D., Nowicki, S., Hall, L.: Emotion recognition abilities and empathy in bullies and victims, Social Development (in submission)
Zins, J.E., Bloodworth, M.R., Weissberg, R.P., Walberg, H.J.: The Scientific Base Linking Social and Emotional Learning to School Success. In: Zins, J.E., Bloodworth, M.R., Weissberg, R.P., Walberg, H.J. (eds.) Building Academic Success on Social and Emotional Learning: What Does the Research Say?, Teachers College Press, New York (2004)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Hall, L., Woods, S., Hall, M., Wolke, D. (2007). Children’s Emotional Interpretation of Synthetic Character Interactions. In: Paiva, A.C.R., Prada, R., Picard, R.W. (eds) Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction. ACII 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4738. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74889-2_56
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74889-2_56
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-74888-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-74889-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)