Measurement of Executive Functioning Using a Playful Robot in Kindergarten

We explored the potential of a robotics application in education as a measurement tool of child executive functioning skills. Sixty-five kindergarteners received assignments to go through a maze with a programmable robot, the Bee-Bot. Via observation we quantified how they solved these tasks. Their...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inComputers in the schools Vol. 36; no. 4; pp. 255 - 273
Main Authors Urlings, Corrie C., Coppens, Karien M., Borghans, Lex
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Routledge 02.10.2019
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Attention
Design
Executive Function
executive functioning
Foreign Countries
Kindergarten
Kindergarten students
Measurement Techniques
Memory
Nonverbal Ability
Problem Solving
Programming
Robotics
Robots
Spatial Ability
Visual Perception
Young Children
Netherlands
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Summary:We explored the potential of a robotics application in education as a measurement tool of child executive functioning skills. Sixty-five kindergarteners received assignments to go through a maze with a programmable robot, the Bee-Bot. Via observation we quantified how they solved these tasks. Their performance was successfully aggregated into a latent variable, which was used to predict the outcomes on standardized tasks that measure executive functioning. The latent variable significantly predicted performance on several tasks that measure problem-solving abilities, memory, visuospatial abilities and attention. It did not significantly predict pencil-and-paper tasks that measured visuospatial ability and nonverbal or design fluency. This study showed that it is possible to use a playful robotics task to obtain information on children's ability. We recommend more research on using diverse robots in larger samples with different age groups to further explore the possibilities of robots as a test instrument.
ISSN:0738-0569
1528-7033
DOI:10.1080/07380569.2019.1677436