Learning Effects of a Child-like Robot on University Students in Training for Intelligence Tests

Abstract

In recent years, as the percentage of children with developmental disabilities in regular classrooms has increased, so has the need for clinical psychologists to administer psychological tests. There are two types of training methods for psychological testing: classroom training and field training. However, due to difficulties in securing training sites and subjects, there is no environment in which clinical psychologists can receive sufficient training in psychological testing. Therefore, in this study, we develop a child-like robot that can train clinical psychologists in intelligence testing (hereinafter referred to as the ”proposed robot”). The proposed robot is equipped with the same speech content as that of a child undergoing intelligence testing. The clinical psychologist trains the robot to perform the intelligence test by talking to the robot. This paper investigated the learning effects of training with a proposed robot on university students studying to become clinical psychologists. The experimental results suggested that training with the proposed robot has the same learning effect as learning to read a conventional manual.