{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,16]],"date-time":"2026-07-16T15:58:02Z","timestamp":1784217482803,"version":"3.55.0"},"reference-count":79,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2024,12,13]],"date-time":"2024-12-13T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1734048000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/100010661","name":"Framework Programme","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100010661","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Robot. AI"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Creativity is an important skill that is known to plummet in children when they start school education that limits their freedom of expression and their imagination. On the other hand, research has shown that integrating social robots into educational settings has the potential to maximize children\u2019s learning outcomes. Therefore, our aim in this work was to investigate stimulating children\u2019s creativity through child-robot interactions. We fine-tuned a Large Language Model (LLM) to exhibit creative behavior and non-creative behavior in a robot and conducted two studies with children to evaluate the viability of our methods in fostering children\u2019s creativity skills. We evaluated creativity in terms of four metrics: fluency, flexibility, elaboration, and originality. We first conducted a study as a storytelling interaction between a child and a wizard-ed social robot in one of two conditions: creative versus non-creative with 38 children. We investigated whether interacting with a creative social robot will elicit more creativity from children. However, we did not find a significant effect of the robot\u2019s creativity on children\u2019s creative abilities. Second, in an attempt to increase the possibility for the robot to have an impact on children\u2019s creativity and to increase the fluidity of the interaction, we produced two models that allow a social agent to autonomously engage with a human in a storytelling context in a creative manner and a non-creative manner respectively. Finally, we conducted another study to evaluate our models by deploying them on a social robot and evaluating them with 103 children. Our results show that children who interacted with the creative autonomous robot were more creative than children who interacted with the non-creative autonomous robot in terms of the fluency, the flexibility, and the elaboration aspects of creativity. The results highlight the difference in children\u2019s learning performance when inetracting with a robot operated at different autonomy levels (Wizard of Oz versus autonoumous). Furthermore, they emphasize on the impact of designing adequate robot\u2019s behaviors on children\u2019s corresponding learning gains in child-robot interactions.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3389\/frobt.2024.1457429","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,12,13]],"date-time":"2024-12-13T05:11:05Z","timestamp":1734066665000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":23,"title":["Fostering children\u2019s creativity through LLM-driven storytelling with a social robot"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"11","author":[{"given":"Maha","family":"Elgarf","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Hanan","family":"Salam","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Christopher","family":"Peters","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,12,13]]},"reference":[{"key":"B1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"673730","DOI":"10.3389\/frobt.2021.673730","article-title":"Social robots as creativity eliciting agents","volume":"8","author":"Ali","year":"","journal-title":"Front. Robotics AI"},{"key":"B2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"359","DOI":"10.1145\/3325480.3325499","article-title":"Can children learn creativity from a social robot?","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 2019 on creativity and cognition","author":"Ali","year":"2019"},{"key":"B3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"100234","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ijcci.2020.100234","article-title":"A social robot\u2019s influence on children\u2019s figural creativity during gameplay","volume":"28","author":"Ali","year":"","journal-title":"Int. J. Child-Computer Interact."},{"key":"B4","volume-title":"Designing child robot interaction for facilitating creative learning","author":"Ali","year":"2019"},{"key":"B5","first-page":"379","article-title":"Creativity encounters between children and robots","author":"Alves-Oliveira","year":""},{"key":"B6","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"e00074","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ohx.2019.e00074","article-title":"Guide to build yolo, a creativity-stimulating robot for children","volume":"6","author":"Alves-Oliveira","year":"","journal-title":"HardwareX"},{"key":"B7","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"100461","DOI":"10.1016\/j.softx.2020.100461","article-title":"Software architecture for yolo, a creativity-stimulating robot","volume":"11","author":"Alves-Oliveira","year":"","journal-title":"SoftwareX"},{"key":"B8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","DOI":"10.31219\/osf.io\/za5h8","article-title":"Sparking creativity with robots: a design perspective","volume-title":"14th annual ACM\/IEEE international conference on human robot interaction (HRI)","author":"Alves-Oliveira","year":""},{"key":"B9","first-page":"2387","article-title":"A personalized household assistive robot that learns and creates new breakfast options through human-robot interaction","author":"Ayub","year":"2023"},{"key":"B10","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"779","DOI":"10.1037\/a0012815","article-title":"A meta-analysis of 25 years of mood-creativity research: hedonic tone, activation, or regulatory focus?","volume":"134","author":"Baas","year":"2008","journal-title":"Psychol. Bull."},{"key":"B11","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"71","DOI":"10.1007\/s12369-008-0001-3","article-title":"Measurement instruments for the anthropomorphism, animacy, likeability, perceived intelligence, and perceived safety of robots","volume":"1","author":"Bartneck","year":"2009","journal-title":"Int. J. Soc. robotics"},{"key":"B12","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"eaat5954","DOI":"10.1126\/scirobotics.aat5954","article-title":"Social robots for education: a review","volume":"3","author":"Belpaeme","year":"2018","journal-title":"Sci. robotics"},{"key":"B13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"143","DOI":"10.1787\/589b283f-en","article-title":"Social robots as educators","volume-title":"OECD digital education outlook 2021 pushing the frontiers with artificial intelligence, blockchain and robots: pushing the frontiers with artificial intelligence, blockchain and robots","author":"Belpaeme","year":"2021"},{"key":"B14","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"62","DOI":"10.1038\/scientificamerican0211-62","article-title":"How language shapes thought","volume":"304","author":"Boroditsky","year":"2011","journal-title":"Sci. Am."},{"key":"B15","first-page":"988","article-title":"Human-robot co-creativity: a scoping review: informing a research agenda for human-robot co-creativity with older adults","author":"Bossema","year":"2023"},{"key":"B16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"215","DOI":"10.1145\/3078072.3079750","article-title":"Classification of children\u2019s handwriting errors for the design of an educational co-writer robotic peer","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 2017 conference on interaction design and children","author":"Chandra","year":"2017"},{"key":"B17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"632","DOI":"10.1145\/3536221.3556569","article-title":"Personalized productive engagement recognition in robot-mediated collaborative learning","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 2022 international conference on multimodal interaction","author":"Chithrra Raghuram","year":"2022"},{"key":"B18","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"154","DOI":"10.1093\/jpepsy\/jsu099","article-title":"Developing and modifying behavioral coding schemes in pediatric psychology: a practical guide","volume":"40","author":"Chorney","year":"2015","journal-title":"J. Pediatr. Psychol."},{"key":"B19","first-page":"95","article-title":"Full-face poetry generation","author":"Colton","year":"2012","journal-title":"ICCC"},{"key":"B20","first-page":"39","volume-title":"Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention","author":"Csikszentmihalyi","year":"1997"},{"key":"B21","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"995","DOI":"10.1515\/iral-2020-0170","article-title":"Deciphering the role of multilingualism in creativity at university: the influence of context","volume":"61","author":"de Prada Creo","year":"2023","journal-title":"Int. Rev. Appl. Linguistics Lang. Teach."},{"key":"B22","first-page":"71","article-title":"\u201cand then what happens?\u201d promoting children\u2019s verbal creativity using a robot","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 2022 ACM\/IEEE international conference on human-robot interaction","author":"Elgarf","year":""},{"key":"B23","first-page":"1","article-title":"Reward seeking or loss aversion? impact of regulatory focus theory on emotional induction in children and their behavior towards a social robot","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 2021 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems","author":"Elgarf","year":""},{"key":"B24","volume-title":"Creativebot: a creative storyteller agent developed by leveraging pre-trained language models","author":"Elgarf","year":"2022"},{"key":"B25","first-page":"60","article-title":"Once upon a story: can a creative storyteller robot stimulate creativity in children?","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 21st ACM international conference on intelligent virtual agents","author":"Elgarf","year":""},{"key":"B26","first-page":"540","article-title":"Creativebot: a creative storyteller robot to stimulate creativity in children","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 2022 international conference on multimodal interaction","author":"Elgarf","year":""},{"key":"B27","article-title":"Designing a co-creative dancing robotic tablet","volume-title":"6th international workshop on computational creativity, concept invention, and general intelligence","author":"Fabiano","year":"2017"},{"key":"B28","article-title":"Hierarchical neural story generation","author":"Fan","year":"2018","journal-title":"arXiv preprint"},{"key":"B29","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"012006","DOI":"10.1088\/1757-899x\/850\/1\/012006","article-title":"The use of smartphone on learning activities: systematic review","volume":"850","author":"Firmansyah","year":"2020","journal-title":"IOP Conf. Ser. Mater. Sci. Eng."},{"key":"B30","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"681","DOI":"10.1007\/s11023-020-09548-1","article-title":"Gpt-3: its nature, scope, limits, and consequences","volume":"30","author":"Floridi","year":"2020","journal-title":"Minds Mach."},{"key":"B31","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"91","DOI":"10.1145\/2696454.2696469","article-title":"Can children catch curiosity from a social robot?","author":"Gordon","year":"2015","journal-title":"Proc. Tenth Annu. ACM\/IEEE Int. Conf. Human-Robot Interact."},{"key":"B32","volume-title":"The nature of human intelligence","author":"Guilford","year":"1967"},{"key":"B33","first-page":"133","article-title":"Elementary science lesson delivered by robot","author":"Hashimoto","year":"2013"},{"key":"B34","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"174","DOI":"10.1016\/j.pec.2013.04.012","article-title":"Using a robot to personalise health education for children with diabetes type 1: a pilot study","volume":"92","author":"Henkemans","year":"2013","journal-title":"Patient Educ. Couns."},{"key":"B35","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"35","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-030-05204-1_4","article-title":"A proposed wizard of oz architecture for a human-robot collaborative drawing task","volume-title":"International conference on social robotics","author":"Hinwood","year":"2018"},{"key":"B36","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"269","DOI":"10.1145\/2701973.2702091","article-title":"The cowriter project: teaching a robot how to write","volume-title":"Proceedings of the tenth annual ACM\/IEEE international conference on human-robot interaction extended abstracts","author":"Hood","year":"2015"},{"key":"B37","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"80","DOI":"10.5898\/jhri.2.2.huang","article-title":"The repertoire of robot behavior: designing social behaviors to support human-robot joint activity","volume":"2","author":"Huang","year":"2013","journal-title":"J. Human-Robot Interact."},{"key":"B38","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1145\/3450741.3465254","article-title":"Child-robot interaction to integrate reflective storytelling into creative play","volume-title":"Creativity and cognition","author":"Hubbard","year":"2021"},{"key":"B39","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"153","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-25504-5_16","article-title":"Motivating children to learn arithmetic with an adaptive robot game","volume-title":"International conference on social robotics","author":"Janssen","year":"2011"},{"key":"B40","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.4324\/9780203052914","article-title":"Games in play: computer game design as a context for children\u2019s learning","author":"Kafai","year":"1995","journal-title":"Huma. mach. inte."},{"key":"B41","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","DOI":"10.4324\/9780203052914","volume-title":"Minds in play: computer game design as a context for children\u2019s learning","author":"Kafai","year":"2012"},{"key":"B42","article-title":"Creativity tasks and coding system\u2013used in the plasma display window study","volume-title":"University of Washington, Seattle, WA: the information school","author":"Kahn","year":"2005"},{"key":"B43","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"285","DOI":"10.1080\/10400419.2011.627805","article-title":"The creativity crisis: the decrease in creative thinking scores on the torrance tests of creative thinking","volume":"23","author":"Kim","year":"2011","journal-title":"Creativity Res. J."},{"key":"B44","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"81","DOI":"10.3389\/frobt.2019.00081","article-title":"A long-term study of young children\u2019s rapport, social emulation, and language learning with a peer-like robot playmate in preschool","volume":"6","author":"Kory-Westlund","year":"","journal-title":"Front. Robotics AI"},{"key":"B45","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"54","DOI":"10.3389\/frobt.2019.00054","article-title":"Exploring the effects of a social robot\u2019s speech entrainment and backstory on young children\u2019s emotion, rapport, relationship, and learning","volume":"6","author":"Kory-Westlund","year":"","journal-title":"Front. Robotics AI"},{"key":"B46","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","DOI":"10.5772\/4695","volume-title":"Interactive robots as facilitators of childrens social development","author":"Kozima","year":"2006"},{"key":"B47","volume-title":"Analysis of microarray gene expression data","author":"Lee","year":"2004"},{"key":"B48","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"367","DOI":"10.1145\/2157689.2157811","article-title":"Modelling empathic behaviour in a robotic game companion for children: an ethnographic study in real-world settings","author":"Leite","year":"2012","journal-title":"Proc. seventh Annu. ACM\/IEEE Int. Conf. Human-Robot Interact."},{"key":"B49","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"75","DOI":"10.1145\/2696454.2696481","article-title":"Emotional storytelling in the classroom: individual versus group interaction between children and robots","volume-title":"Proceedings of the tenth annual ACM\/IEEE international conference on human-robot interaction","author":"Leite","year":"2015"},{"key":"B50","first-page":"423","article-title":"Personalizing robot tutors to individuals\u2019 learning differences","author":"Leyzberg","year":"2014"},{"key":"B51","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"949","DOI":"10.1007\/s11063-019-10063-3","article-title":"An abstract painting generation method based on deep generative model","volume":"52","author":"Li","year":"2020","journal-title":"Neural Process. Lett."},{"key":"B52","first-page":"1","article-title":"It is your turn: collaborative ideation with a co-creative robot through sketch","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 2020 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems","author":"Lin","year":"2020"},{"key":"B53","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"405","DOI":"10.1007\/bf03172984","article-title":"Social processes and creative collaboration in children","volume":"15","author":"MacDonald","year":"2000","journal-title":"Eur. J. Psychol. Educ."},{"key":"B54","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"348","DOI":"10.1111\/1467-9507.00130","article-title":"Children\u2019s creative collaborations: the importance of friendship when working together on a musical composition","volume":"9","author":"Miell","year":"2000","journal-title":"Soc. Dev."},{"key":"B55","first-page":"32","article-title":"Empowering education with llms-the next-gen interface and content generation","volume-title":"International conference on artificial intelligence in education","author":"Moore","year":"2023"},{"key":"B56","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"13","DOI":"10.2316\/journal.209.2013.1.209-0015","article-title":"A review of the applicability of robots in education","volume":"1","author":"Mubin","year":"2013","journal-title":"J. Technol. Educ. Learn."},{"key":"B57","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1145\/3424636.3426903","article-title":"Collaborative storytelling with large-scale neural language models","volume-title":"Motion, interaction and games","author":"Nichols","year":"2020"},{"key":"B58","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.3389\/fcomp.2021.674333","article-title":"Design and analysis of a collaborative story generation game for social robots","volume":"74","author":"Nichols","year":"2021","journal-title":"Front. Comput. Sci."},{"key":"B59","first-page":"419","article-title":"Methods of behavior coding of survey interviews","volume":"22","author":"Ongena","year":"2006","journal-title":"J. Official Statistics"},{"key":"B60","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"137","DOI":"10.1145\/2909824.3020213","article-title":"Growing growth mindset with a social robot peer","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 2017 ACM\/IEEE international conference on human-robot interaction","author":"Park","year":"2017"},{"key":"B61","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","DOI":"10.4324\/9781315175263","volume-title":"Interactive Storytelling: developing inclusive stories for children and adults","author":"Park","year":"2017"},{"key":"B62","first-page":"9","article-title":"Language models are unsupervised multitask learners","volume":"1","author":"Radford","year":"2019","journal-title":"OpenAI blog"},{"key":"B63","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"37","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-27482-4_7","article-title":"A two years informal learning experience using the thymio robot","volume-title":"Advances in autonomous mini robots","author":"Riedo","year":"2012"},{"key":"B64","volume-title":"Out of our minds","author":"Robinson","year":"2011"},{"key":"B65","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1613","DOI":"10.1145\/1753326.1753567","article-title":"Expressive robots in education: varying the degree of social supportive behavior of a robotic tutor","author":"Saerbeck","year":"2010","journal-title":"Proc. SIGCHI Conf. Hum. factors Comput. Syst."},{"key":"B66","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"445","DOI":"10.1109\/taffc.2023.3278707","article-title":"Automatic context-aware inference of engagement in hmi: a survey","volume":"15","author":"Salam","year":"2023","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Affect. Comput."},{"key":"B67","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"128","DOI":"10.1145\/2909824.3020222","article-title":"Adaptive robot language tutoring based on bayesian knowledge tracing and predictive decision-making","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 2017 ACM\/IEEE international conference on human-robot interaction","author":"Schodde","year":"2017"},{"key":"B68","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"370","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ijhcs.2005.04.003","article-title":"Creativity or creativities?","volume":"63","author":"Sternberg","year":"2005","journal-title":"Int. J. Human-Computer Stud."},{"key":"B69","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"205","DOI":"10.1145\/3078072.3079714","article-title":"Collaborative storytelling between robot and child: a feasibility study","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 2017 conference on interaction design and children","author":"Sun","year":"2017"},{"key":"B70","volume-title":"Torrance tests of creative thinking: norms-technical manual","author":"Torrance","year":"1966"},{"key":"B71","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"195","DOI":"10.1177\/001698626801200401","article-title":"A longitudinal examination of the fourth grade slump in creativity","volume":"12","author":"Torrance","year":"1968","journal-title":"Gift. Child. Q."},{"key":"B72","first-page":"664","article-title":"Wizard of oz vs autonomous: children\u2019s perception changes according to robot\u2019s operation condition","author":"Tozadore","year":"2017"},{"key":"B73","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"205","DOI":"10.1023\/a:1012295615144","article-title":"Interobserver agreement in behavioral research: importance and calculation","volume":"10","author":"Watkins","year":"2000","journal-title":"J. Behav. Educ."},{"key":"B74","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1229","DOI":"10.1145\/1124772.1124957","article-title":"Robot-human interaction with an anthropomorphic percussionist","author":"Weinberg","year":"","journal-title":"Proc. SIGCHI Conf. Hum. Factors Comput. Syst."},{"key":"B75","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"28","DOI":"10.1162\/comj.2006.30.4.28","article-title":"Toward robotic musicianship","volume":"30","author":"Weinberg","year":"","journal-title":"Comput. Music J."},{"key":"B76","first-page":"1556","article-title":"Elan: a professional framework for multimodality research","author":"Wittenburg","year":"2006"},{"key":"B77","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"610","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/2023.bea-1.52","article-title":"Evaluating reading comprehension exercises generated by llms: a showcase of chatgpt in education applications","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 18th workshop on innovative use of NLP for building educational applications (BEA 2023)","author":"Xiao","year":"2023"},{"key":"B78","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"7378","DOI":"10.1609\/aaai.v33i01.33017378","article-title":"Plan-and-write: towards better automatic storytelling","volume":"33","author":"Yao","year":"2019","journal-title":"Proc. AAAI Conf. Artif. Intell."},{"key":"B79","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"341","DOI":"10.1145\/3568162.3576968","article-title":"A social robot reading partner for explorative guidance","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 2023 ACM\/IEEE international conference on human-robot interaction","author":"Zhang","year":"2023"}],"container-title":["Frontiers in Robotics and AI"],"original-title":[],"link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/articles\/10.3389\/frobt.2024.1457429\/full","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2024,12,13]],"date-time":"2024-12-13T05:11:26Z","timestamp":1734066686000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/articles\/10.3389\/frobt.2024.1457429\/full"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2024,12,13]]},"references-count":79,"alternative-id":["10.3389\/frobt.2024.1457429"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/frobt.2024.1457429","relation":{},"ISSN":["2296-9144"],"issn-type":[{"value":"2296-9144","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2024,12,13]]},"article-number":"1457429"}}