Are tutor robots for everyone? The influence of attitudes, anxiety, and personality on robot-led language learning

Abstract

Do some individuals benefit more from social robots than others? Using a second language (L2) vocabulary lesson as an example, this study examined how individual differences in attitudes toward robots, anxiety in learning L2, and personality traits may be related to the learning outcomes. One hundred and two native Turkish-speaking adults were taught eight English words in a one-on-one lesson either with the NAO robot (N = 51) or with a human tutor (N = 51). The results in both production and receptive language tests indicated that, following the same protocol, the two tutors are fairly comparable in teaching L2 vocabulary. Negative attitudes toward robots and anxiety in L2 learning impeded participants from learning vocabulary in the robot tutor condition whereas the personality trait of extroversion negatively predicted vocabulary learning in the human tutor condition. This study is among the first to demonstrate how individual differences can affect learning outcomes in robot-led sessions and how general attitudes toward a type of device may affect the ways humans learn using the device.