1 research outputs found
Pedagogical Agents for Fostering Question-Asking Skills in Children
Question asking is an important tool for constructing academic knowledge, and
a self-reinforcing driver of curiosity. However, research has found that
question asking is infrequent in the classroom and children's questions are
often superficial, lacking deep reasoning. In this work, we developed a
pedagogical agent that encourages children to ask divergent-thinking questions,
a more complex form of questions that is associated with curiosity. We
conducted a study with 95 fifth grade students, who interacted with an agent
that encourages either convergent-thinking or divergent-thinking questions.
Results showed that both interventions increased the number of
divergent-thinking questions and the fluency of question asking, while they did
not significantly alter children's perception of curiosity despite their high
intrinsic motivation scores. In addition, children's curiosity trait has a
mediating effect on question asking under the divergent-thinking agent,
suggesting that question-asking interventions must be personalized to each
student based on their tendency to be curious.Comment: Accepted at CHI 202