Motivated by mixed evidence on the effectiveness of reading companions on children’s reading performance, as well as the clear and present need for libraries to conduct literacy education, this study sought to investigate the feasibility of using social robots in library literacy activities and to extract the essential functions of effective reading companions by comparing human and robot co‐readers. A humanoid robot, Robot Julia, was developed as a social robot to provide oral conversation and offer children tactful and stimulating support for their reading. An experimental study was conducted to examine child patrons’ perceptions and performance in reading activities with the robot companion as compared to human companions. A total of 36 elementary school children participated in the study. The results positively supported that the participants perceived the robot companion as more favourable and desirable to read with than a human co‐reader. The children favoured robotic verbalisation over human verbalisation. According to the results of the comparison, cognitively it was found that human and robot companions facilitated children’s reading comprehension in different ways and that the children performed similarly well with both kinds of reading companions. Affectively, the robot co‐reader induced more social interaction during the reading sessions. Despite all the positive aspects, it is also necessary to consider the limitations including the novelty effect of the approach. This study contributes empirical evidence in the pragmatic field of library science and expands upon social robot research by exploring one‐on‐one child–robot interactions in reading, as opposed to the group contexts in previous studies.

中文翻译：

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与机器人和人类同伴一起阅读图书馆扫盲活动的比较研究

出于混合阅读证据的作用，有关阅读同伴对儿童阅读能力的有效性以及图书馆进行读写教育的明确和当前需求的启发，本研究旨在调查在图书馆识字活动中使用社交机器人的可行性，并从中提取必要的知识。通过比较人类和机器人共同阅读者，有效阅读同伴的功能。一种人形机器人Robot Julia被开发为社交机器人，可以提供口头对话，并为儿童提供机智和刺激性的阅读支持。进行了一项实验研究，以检查儿童顾客在机器人同伴与人类同伴之间的阅读活动中的感知和表现。共有36名小学生参加了这项研究。结果肯定地表明，与人类共同阅读者相比，参与者认为机器人伴侣更有利于阅读。孩子们更喜欢机器人语言而不是人类语言。根据比较的结果，从认知上发现，人类和机器人同伴以不同的方式促进了孩子的阅读理解，并且在两种阅读同伴中孩子的表现相似。有趣的是，机器人共同阅读器在阅读过程中引发了更多的社交互动。尽管有所有积极方面，但也有必要考虑局限性，包括该方法的新颖性。