Can Conversational Agents Change the Way Children Talk to People?

Millions of children now use conversational agents (CAs), leading researchers and the public alike to ask how interactions with these devices might shape children’s communication with people. We conducted a single-session observational lab study with 22 five-to-ten-year-old children as a step toward understanding whether and how children might transfer a linguistic routine they learned from a CA to a conversation with another person. We found that 68% of children spontaneously used this routine in a conversation with their parent in the lab, and 55% continued to use it at home. When addressing parents, children infused the routine with warmth and playfulness that they did not use when addressing the CA, adapting it to suit their relationship with their parent. However, only 18% of children used it in conversation with an unfamiliar researcher, where they instead were more likely to follow conventional conversational norms. These findings suggest children are quick to learn linguistic routines from CAs but use social differentiation when they apply them. Children’s willingness to expand on and share the routine with their parent is consistent with the principles of the Joint Media Engagement (JME) framework and suggests CAs may be a productive medium for creating JME experiences.