Robots are an increasingly prevalent presence in children’s lives. However, little is known about the ways in which children learn from robots and whether they do so in the same way as they learn from humans. To investigate this, we adapted a previously established imitation paradigm centered on inefficient tool use. Children (3- to 6-year-olds; N = 121) were measured on their acquisition and transmission of normative knowledge modeled by a human or a robot. Children were more likely to adopt use of a normative tool and to transmit this knowledge to another when shown how to do so by the human than when shown how to do so by the robot. Older children (5- and 6-year-olds) were less likely than younger children (3- and 4-year-olds) to select the normative tool. Our findings suggest that preschool children are capable of copying and transmitting normative techniques from both human and robot models, albeit at different rates and dependent on age.

机器人在儿童的生活中越来越普遍。然而，人们对儿童向机器人学习的方式以及他们是否以与向人类学习的方式相同的方式知之甚少。为了对此进行研究，我们采用了以前建立的以低效工具使用为中心的模仿范式。儿童（3 至 6 岁；N = 121) 是衡量他们对人类或机器人建模的规范知识的获取和传播。与机器人展示如何这样做相比，当人类展示如何这样做时，儿童更有可能采用规范工具并将这些知识传递给另一个人。年龄较大的儿童（5 岁和 6 岁）比年幼的儿童（3 岁和 4 岁）更不可能选择规范工具。我们的研究结果表明，学龄前儿童能够从人类和机器人模型中复制和传播规范技术，尽管速度不同且取决于年龄。