A recent study from the University of Tsukuba has found that consolidation of a motor task was enhanced by praise from artificial beings.
Ok, so let’s break this down. What does consolidation of a motor task mean? Well before we successfully perform doing motor tasks, like playing the guitar, we go through the consolidation period of learning how to do it. Basically building up our muscle memory.
This learning phase is augmented by artificial praise, or essentially robots cheering people on. This has some very interesting implications for both the education system and the sports rehabilitation domain.
One huge problem for struggling students, and I have seen first hand, is simply getting motivated. It’s hard to blame them, too. For elementary schoolers, the real value of the work they put in does not manifest itself until a decade later. That’s a long time and a dim light at the end of the tunnel for many kids. Motivational robots can potentially go a long way in getting students to learn.
As of late, there is much more scientific research invested into motivation and how it can be effectively used for learning. Kou Murayama, PhD, for example has dedicated his team towards conducting experiments of the effects of different kinds of motivation. It may come as no surprise that his findings revealed that motivation helps. However, the intriguing and important parts lie in how exactly motivation helps, and what the proper way to motivate is. One interesting finding is the undermining effect of an extrinsic reward of an intrinsic reward. Of course, a reward system is an effective means of motivation, however it is possible to over-reward or perhaps mis-reward someone. In Murayama’s studies, when a group of participants were given a monetary compensation for competing in a game (extrinsic), it was found that the reward group showed “less voluntary engagement in the task” than the control group who were playing because they found the game fun (intrinsic value). This can be extended to the classroom where students should be motivated through finding enjoyment in the learning, perhaps through more educational games, rather than being given candy for doing well. More research is being done on the subject and it will be interesting to see if there will be effective inter-disciplinary studies between robotics and neuroscience to bring out the best out of people.
If we can successfully implement motivating robots in the classroom, why stop there? Maybe we can have robot cheerleaders! More realistically, artificial physical trainers and physical therapy assistants seem very possible. As a perpetual physical rehabber, one problem I have is properly doing the physical therapy at home. If I had a robot at home to motivate me in consolidating my motor tasks, in my case exercising my knee, I’m sure I would be playing for the Knicks in no time.
Sources:
University of Tsukuba. “Two motivational artificial beings are better than one for enhancing learning: Researchers find that praise
delivered by robots and virtual agents improves offline learning.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 5 November 2020. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/11/201105113001.htm>.
