Enhancing wayfinding in pre-school children through robot and socio-cognitive conflict

Wayfinding is one of the most important skills that children have to learn in order to safely move in the environment. One problem that 5‐year‐old children encounter with wayfinding is changing their point of view to that of another person in different position in the same environment, such as that of a person opposite them whose perspective is turned 180° with respect to their own. Robots could help children in learning this skill, since children can instruct them to move in the environment, in predetermined paths, by starting from a rotated perspective. This study compares classic socio‐cognitive conflict with a human partner, but in this case with a robot partner, in order to evaluate how a specific activity (instructing a robot to perform a given route) enhances the wayfinding skills of 156 5‐year‐old children. Using two different robots (humanoid and non‐humanoid) and two different conditions (a child and the robot and two children and the robot), the study shows that children who performed the task with the humanoid robot improved their performance significantly better compared with those who used the non‐humanoid robot. Furthermore, children engaged in the Socio‐Cognitive Conflict situation with another child‐outperformed children in the Socio‐Cognitive Conflict with robots. Finally, children with low‐level performance in the pretest made the greatest improvement both in terms of moves made and time taken to complete the task in comparison with children in the High‐Level Group and of the Control Group.