I Remember You! Interaction with Memory for an Empathic Virtual Robotic Tutor

We present a study that investigates the effect of incorporatingmemory in the interaction for a virtual robotic tutorin terms of helping children achieve a pedagogical goal andthe perceived likeability and empathy of the tutor. Thedomain is a virtual robotic tutor who is guiding and helpinglearners through a mobile Treasure Hunt exercise thattests their map reading skills. The contribution describedin this paper is the discovery that incorporating ‘memory’through utterances that recall events from previous interactionssignificantly increases the learner’s ability to performa pedagogical task. However, the virtual tutor with memorywas perceived as less likeable and the instructions given asharder to follow than with a virtual tutor without memory.In addition, there was a significant drop in perceived empathy.This work has a large potential influence in the fieldof interaction design for agents as one cannot blindly addin human-like features, such as, memory that improve taskperformance without considering the potential detrimentaleffects to the perceived empathy and likeability.