In a regular classroom setting, a more emotionally expressive teacher has been shown to be positively correlated with learning outcomes and task motivation among the students. Would this also be the case if the teacher were a robot? This study investigates how the facial expressions of an anthropomorphic robot affect learning outcomes and task motivation in adult learners studying a second language by setting up an experiment using the Furhat robot. The same interactions were carried out by an experiment group and a control group. The results show no increase in performance in either learning outcomes or task performance. Future studies are suggested to investigate other potential factors of why robots outperform regular computers in these settings. / I ett vanligt klassrumssammanhang har det visats att lärare som visar känslouttryck har en positiv korrelation med läranderesultat och motivation hos studenterna. Skulle detta också vara fallet om läraren var en robot? Den här studien undersöker hur ansiktsuttrycken hos en människoliknande robot påverkar läranderesultat och motivation hos vuxna studenter som lär sig ett andraspråk genom ett experiment med roboten Furhat. Samma interaktioner genomfördes av både en experimentgrupp och en kontrollgrupp. Resultaten visar ingen ökning av varken läranderesultat eller motivation. Framtida studier föreslås att undersöka andra potentiella faktorer som bidrar till att robotar utpresterar människor i dessa sammanhang.

This dissertation presents the design of a novel joining-in-type humanoid robot-assisted language learning that uses two robots to conduct a goal-oriented conversation with the human learner to practice English as a second language. The system uses implicit learning as the main learning style to teach the usage of a specific expression form. A mix of tutoring and peer learning is implemented in the course of a three-party conversation. This learning style enables the learner to gain linguistic knowledge, and at the same time it improves the performance of the speech recognition engine. / 博士(工学) / Doctor of Philosophy in Engineering / 同志社大学 / Doshisha University