This Australian study examines whether and how technologies such as Artificially Intelligent (AI) toys in a home-based setting might socially and emotionally support children with diverse needs through play. Building on the concept of ‘emotional capital', and employing a design-based research approach, parents during the COVID-19 lockdown periods in 2020 intentionally used robotic toys to engage their children with additional diverse needs in home-based play experiences. The data from both parents’ and children’s (n = 5) Zoom interviews, digital observations and children’s drawings demonstrated how children creatively conversed with their AI robots in innovative and empathy-based dialogues that generated happy feelings and a sense of ‘imaginary’ togetherness with their robot during the coding experiences. This study contributes to research by exploring the use of AI robotic toys together with physical and artificial environments and offers a case to build children’s emotional capital in enabling children’s social-emotional literacies.

澳大利亚的这项研究探讨了人工智能 (AI) 玩具等技术是否以及如何通过游戏在社交和情感上支持具有不同需求的儿童。基于“情感资本”的概念，并采用基于设计的研究方法，在 2020 年 COVID-19 封锁期间，父母有意使用机器人玩具让孩子在家庭游戏体验中满足额外的多样化需求。父母和孩子的数据（n= 5) Zoom 访谈、数字观察和儿童绘画展示了儿童如何创造性地与他们的 AI 机器人进行创新和基于移情的对话，在编码体验期间产生快乐的感觉和与他们的机器人“想象”在一起的感觉。本研究通过探索将人工智能机器人玩具与物理和人工环境结合使用来促进研究，并提供了一个案例来建立儿童的情感资本，以实现儿童的社会情感素养。