skip to main content
10.1145/1054972.1055089acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PageschiConference Proceedingsconference-collections
Article

Testing the media equation with children

Published: 02 April 2005 Publication History

Abstract

Designers of children's technology are often more interested in user motivation than those who design systems for adults. Since children's technology often has aims such as education or practice, keeping the user engaged and interested is an important objective. The Media Equation - the idea that people respond socially to computers - shows potential for improving engagement and motivation. Studies have shown that people are more positive about both themselves and the computer when software exhibits certain social characteristics. To explore the possible value of the Media Equation as a design concept for children's software, we replicated two of the original Media Equation studies, concerning the effects of praise and team formation. Our results, however, were contrary to our expectations: we did not find evidence that children were significantly affected by social characteristics in software, and adults were influenced in only a few cases. These results raise questions about using the Media Equation as a design principle for children's software.

References

[1]
Barkow, J.H., L. Cosmides, and J. Tooby. The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
[2]
Bench-Capon, T.J.M. and A.M. McEnery. People Interact Through Computers Not With Them. Interacting with Computers, 1(1), 1989.
[3]
Campanella-Bracken, C. Children and Social Responses to Computers: Praise, Intrinsic Motivation, and Learning. Ph.D. Dissertation, Temple University, 2000.
[4]
Chiasson, S. The Effects of the Media Equation on Children. M. Sc. Thesis, Univ. of Saskatchewan, 2004.
[5]
Cockburn, A., and S. Greenberg. Children's Collaboration Styles in a Newtonian MicroWorld. Proc. ACM CHI'96, 1996, 181--182.
[6]
Druin, A., and K. Inkpen. When are Personal Technologies for Children? Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, v.5, 2001, 191--194.
[7]
Druin, A. Children as Our Technology Design Partners. in The Design of Children's Technology, Allison Druin ed., Morgan Kaufmann, 1999.
[8]
Druin, A., B. Bederson, J.P. Hourcade, L. Sherman, G. Revelle, M. Platner, and S. Weng. Designing a Digital Library for Young Children: An Intergenerational Partnership. Proc. ACM JCDL'01, 2001, 398--405.
[9]
Friedman, B. "It's the Computer's Fault" - Reasoning about Computers as Moral Agents. Proc. ACM CHI'95, 1995, 226--227.
[10]
Fogg, B.J., C. Nass. Silicon Sychophants: the Effects of Computers that Flatter. IJHCS, v.46, 1997, 551--561.
[11]
Goldstein, M., G. Alsio, and J. Werdenhoff. The Media Equation Does Not Always Apply: People are not Polite Towards Small Computers. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, v.6, 2002, 87--96.
[12]
Hanna, L., K. Risden, M. Czerwinski, and K.J. Alexander. The Role of Usability Research in Designing Children's Computer Products. In The Design of Children's Technology, Allison Druin ed., Morgan Kaufmann, 1999.
[13]
Inkpen, K., K.S. Booth, S.D. Gribble, and M. Klawe. Give and Take: Children Collaborating on One Computer. Proc. ACM CHI'95, 1995, 258--259.
[14]
Inkpen, K. Drag-and-Drop Versus Point-and-Click Mouse Interaction Styles for Children. ACM ToCHI, 8(1), 2001, 1--33.
[15]
Lester, J.C., S.T. Barlow, S.A. Converse, B.A. Stone, S.E. Kahler, and R.S. Bhogal. The Persona Effect: Affective Impact of Animated Pedagogical Agents. Proc. ACM CHI'97, 1997, 359--366.
[16]
Moon, Y,. and C. Nass. Are Computers Scapegoats? Attributions of Responsibility in Human-computer Interaction. IJHCS, v.49, 1998, 79--94.
[17]
Nass, C., Fogg, B.J., and Y. Moon. Can Computers be Teammates? IJHCS, v.45, 1996, 669--678.
[18]
Nass, C., J. Steuer, and E.R. Tauber. Computers are Social Actors. Proc. ACM CHI'94, 1994, 72--78.
[19]
Pintrich, R. and D. Schunk. Motivation in Education. Prentice-Hall, 2002.
[20]
Reeves, B., and C. Nass. The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
[21]
Scaife, M., and M. van Duuren. Do Computers have Brains? What Children Believe about Intelligent Artifacts. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, v.13, 1995, 367--377.
[22]
Shechtman, N., and L.M. Horowitz. Media Inequality in Conversation: How People Behave Differently When Interacting with Computers and People. Proc. ACM CHI 2003, 281--288.
[23]
Stienstra, M. Is Every Kid Having Fun? A Gender Approach to Interactive Toy Design. Twente University Press, Enschede, 2003.
[24]
Strommen, E., and K. Alexander. Emotional Interfaces for Interactive Aardvarks: Designing Affect into Social Interfaces for Children. Proc. ACM CHI 1999, 528--535.
[25]
Super, D., M. Westrom, and M. Klawe. Design Issues Involving Entertainment Click-ons. Proc. ACM CHI 1996, 179--180.
[26]
Turkle, S. Cyborg Babies and Cy-Dough-plasm: Ideas about Self and Life in the Culture of Simulation. In Cyborg Babies: From Technosex to Technotots. Robbie Davis-Floyd and Joseph Dumit, eds., New York: Routledge, 1998.
[27]
Turkle, S. Life on the Screen: Identity in the age of the internet. Touchstone: New York, NY: 1995.

Cited By

View all
  • (2020)Building a Stronger CASA: Extending the Computers Are Social Actors ParadigmHuman-Machine Communication10.30658/hmc.1.51(71-86)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2020
  • (2020)She talks to me as if she were aliveProceedings of the 20th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents10.1145/3383652.3423906(1-8)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2020
  • (2019)Young Children and Voice Search: What We Know From Human-Computer Interaction ResearchFrontiers in Psychology10.3389/fpsyg.2019.0000810Online publication date: 22-Jan-2019
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. Testing the media equation with children

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI '05: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    April 2005
    928 pages
    ISBN:1581139985
    DOI:10.1145/1054972
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

    Sponsors

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 02 April 2005

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. CASA
    2. children's technology
    3. media equation

    Qualifiers

    • Article

    Conference

    CHI05
    Sponsor:

    Acceptance Rates

    CHI '05 Paper Acceptance Rate 93 of 372 submissions, 25%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 6,199 of 26,314 submissions, 24%

    Upcoming Conference

    CHI 2025
    ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    April 26 - May 1, 2025
    Yokohama , Japan

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)39
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)5
    Reflects downloads up to 19 Feb 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2020)Building a Stronger CASA: Extending the Computers Are Social Actors ParadigmHuman-Machine Communication10.30658/hmc.1.51(71-86)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2020
    • (2020)She talks to me as if she were aliveProceedings of the 20th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents10.1145/3383652.3423906(1-8)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2020
    • (2019)Young Children and Voice Search: What We Know From Human-Computer Interaction ResearchFrontiers in Psychology10.3389/fpsyg.2019.0000810Online publication date: 22-Jan-2019
    • (2019)A Framework of Touchscreen Interaction Design Recommendations for Children (TIDRC)Proceedings of the 18th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children10.1145/3311927.3323149(419-431)Online publication date: 12-Jun-2019
    • (2018)my.Eskwela: Designing An Enterprise Learning Management System to Increase Social Network and Reduce Cognitive LoadProcedia Computer Science10.1016/j.procs.2018.10.080138(595-602)Online publication date: 2018
    • (2018)Age- and Gender-Based Differences in Children’s Interactions with a Gender-Matching RobotInternational Journal of Social Robotics10.1007/s12369-018-0472-910:5(687-700)Online publication date: 29-Mar-2018
    • (2017)Natural User Interface for Children: From Requirement to DesignAdvances in Visual Informatics10.1007/978-3-319-70010-6_57(612-624)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2017
    • (2015)Examining young children’s perception toward augmented reality-infused dramatic playEducational Technology Research and Development10.1007/s11423-015-9374-963:3(455-474)Online publication date: 21-Mar-2015
    • (2013)Smile and the world will smile with you-The effects of a virtual agent's smile on users' evaluation and behaviorInternational Journal of Human-Computer Studies10.1016/j.ijhcs.2012.09.00671:3(335-349)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2013
    • (2012)A preliminary exploration of implications of the media equation on IR systemsThe 6th International Conference on Soft Computing and Intelligent Systems, and The 13th International Symposium on Advanced Intelligence Systems10.1109/SCIS-ISIS.2012.6505285(1729-1733)Online publication date: Nov-2012
    • Show More Cited By

    View Options

    Login options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Figures

    Tables

    Media

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media