Children more candid about mental health when talking to robot, study finds

The Nao robot looks more like a prop from a low-budget sci-fi film than the cutting edge of medical research. But a study found that children felt more comfortable confiding in the child-sized, quizzical-looking humanoid than when responding to mental health assessments with their parents, in some cases disclosing information that they had not previously shared.

Children whose responses on traditional questionnaires suggested they could be experiencing mental wellbeing problems, gave more strongly negative responses when answering the same questions with the robot and some shared information that they had not disclosed when responding to in-person or online questionnaires.

Gunes suggested that in future, robots could be used in schools to screen children for mental health problems, allowing children to get support at an earlier stage.

The findings will be presented on Thursday at the 31st IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication in Naples.