Game-Based Human-Robot Interaction Promotes Self-disclosure in People with Visual Impairments and Intellectual Disabilities

The willingness to share personal information about negative social experiences is of great importance for the effectiveness of robot-mediated social therapies. This paper reports the results of a pilot test on the effectiveness of using a game or a conversation on achieving a higher self-disclosure in people with visual and intellectual disabilities. The participants interacted with a humanoid robot NAO. Comparable game-based and conversation-based interaction were implemented. We measured the length of the self-disclosing sentences during the two interactions. The majority of the participants said that they preferred the conversation-based over the game-based interaction. The results indicate that during the game-based interaction the participants used much longer self-disclosing sentences in comparison with the to be conversation-based interaction. The outcomes of this pilot will help to improve the human-robot interactions for promoting self-disclosure as the first step in a research project that aims to alleviate worrying behavior in this user group.