TY  - JOUR
AB  - The study of children's gestures from a cross-cultural perspective has attracted considerable interest in recent years. At the same time, it poses methodological challenges, such as ensuring cross-cultural comparability and culturally sensitive elicitation procedures. In this methods paper, we address the methodological challenges of eliciting gestures from children in structured yet naturalistic interactions by proposing a set of theory-informed design principles for using social robots as interactive partners in standardized, task-oriented interactions across cultural contexts. Building on an interactionist perspective grounded in theoretical considerations from pragmatic frames that integrate task, partner, and interaction models, we present a scripted, role-based paradigm to which the design principles were applied. In this paradigm, a humanoid robot adopts the role of a novice learner and engages preschool-aged children in dialogue to explain familiar, everyday actions, including prompting corrective behavior from children when the robot systematically makes errors in recalling previously demonstrated actions. We propose procedures intended to support cultural adaptability while maintaining comparable interactional contingencies across cultural environments. A pilot deployment in two locations (Germany and Japan) is reported to demonstrate feasibility of the developed methodical approach. Descriptive observations indicate that the paradigm can be implemented across cultural groups and can elicit representational gestures during children's explanations. We discuss how social robots may further contribute to research on children's multimodal communicative behavior in interaction, along with methodical refinements needed for future studies. Overall, the developed design demonstrates high experimental control and applicability, offering promising principles for future research on children's gestures in interaction with social robots.
AU  - Tolksdorf, Nils Frederik
AU  - Rohlfing, Katharina J.
AU  - Grimminger, Angela
AU  - Sekine, Kazuki
DO  - 10.17619/UNIPB/1-2634
PB  - Universitätsbibliothek
DP  - Universität Paderborn
LA  - eng
PY  - 2026
SN  - 2297-900X
SP  - 1 Online-Ressource (Seite 1-14) : Diagramme, Illustrationen
T2  - Frontiers in Communication
TI  - Social robots as a method for cross-cultural gesture elicitation in children
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hbz:466:2-58714
Y2  - 2026-07-03T07:39:41
ER  -