Embedding computers and the internet in everyday objects has resulted in connected and interactive homes. Parents can lock their doors, dim the lights, ask if the fridge is out of milk and order more, all with their voice during family dinner. While this may seem futuristic, 46% of adults use digital assistants (PEW, 2017) and Amazon reports selling over 100 million Alexa digital assistants across 28,000 form factors (e.g., speaker, picture frame, Bohn, 2019). The connected home environment of today’s child begs the question of how the use of digital assistants will shape children’s beliefs of how intelligent technologies function (i.e., theory of artificial minds) and influence how children evaluate information learned from these knowledge objects; important questions considering people’s difficulty identifying fake news online (i.e., Pennycook & Rand, 2018).
Major technology companies like Amazon, Google, and Apple have proprietary DAs, Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri, respectively (Koksal, 2020). 146.9 million smart speakers were sold in 2019 globally (Koksal, 2020) and a quarter of American adults have a smart speaker in their homes (Pew Research, 2019). Not only are these devices commonplace in homes, but they are also being designed specifically for children. Amazon launched a kid's edition of its echo-dot speaker (Perez, 2020) with features such as "Reading Sidekick with Alexa" an interactive storyteller designed to help children with reading (Amazon, n.d).
Given DA adoption rates and the focus on children, it is vital to understand these technologies' psychological and educational implications. With the accelerated shift to digital learning modes, especially during the Covid- 19 pandemic, it is important to research technologies that could be used in future learning environments. DAs are a relatively low-cost and ubiquitous artificial intelligence (AI) technology that are already being used by children. In this way, DAs represent one of the first forays for AI into children’s learning and development. DAs have the capabilities to be used more formally as learning and knowledge devices in years to come.
The goals of the research are:
1) Determine the frequency of parents and children’s digital assistant use in the home.
2) Detail the types of knowledge search parents and children conduct via digital assistants.
3) Establish, contribute to and build out a proposed Theory of Artificial Minds (ToAM) framework that integrates concepts from ToM and computer science education to understand how children believe DAs' ‘think'
4) Assess how children conceive of voice-based artificial intelligent technologies, i.e., their ToAM for DAs
5) Investigate whether children’s ToAM affects their ability to learn from voice assistants
