Abstract
Our exploratory study about robot builders‟ attachment to their LEGO robots found that college level participants showed strong affection for their robots, but the relationship was different from human-human or human-pet attachment in terms of lack of separation related anxiety and enjoyment of companion. Whether the relationship should be named attachment is now pending. The present research investigated further in three aspects: 1) revised the emotion questionnaire based on a newly developed emotional response model; 2) expanded the participants to middle school and high school students who participate in robotics competition tournaments; 3) examined additional factors that might influence their emotional responses to the robot, including: participation in tournaments, team dependency, time/effect input, performance expectation, and features of the robot. The revised emotion response questionnaire showed high reliability and significantly positive correlations with the overall affection for robot. Time/effort input and features of the robot were found significantly contribute to their emotional responses to the robot. This study will help robotics educators better understand students‟ emotions, and adjust accordingly to increase students‟ learning effectiveness and well-being.
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