Synthetic emotions beat points for kids, but not for adults

A new arXiv preprint (2605.27539) by Morten Roed Frederiksen and Kasper Støy explores how to keep users engaged with small social robots designed to support children with anxiety disorders. The team built a tactile robot that uses either synthetic emotional feedback (e.g., happy/sad expressions) or gamified point rewards to encourage interaction. In a first study with 16 school children aged 6–8, participants showed a clear preference for emotional engagement over points. But that's only half the story.

In a second study with 14 university students aged 20–27 observed across a full day of interactions, the results flipped: points-based gamification produced significantly higher task accuracy (p<0.05) and better sustained performance over time. This contrast underscores a key insight for designers of socially assistive robots: stated preferences and actual behavioral outcomes can diverge depending on the user's age and interaction context. The authors emphasize the importance of validating engagement strategies through observed, naturalistic interactions rather than relying solely on self-reports, especially when building robots for therapeutic or educational use.