Anthropomorphizing Technology: A Conceptual Review of Anthropomorphism Research and How it Relates to Children’s Engagements with Digital Voice Assistants

Abstract‘Anthropomorphism’ is a popular term in the literature on human-technology engagements, in general, and child-technology engagements, in particular. But what does it really mean to ‘anthropomorphize’ something in today’s world? This conceptual review article, addressed to researchers interested in anthropomorphism and adjacent areas, reviews contemporary anthropomorphism research, and it offers a critical perspective on how anthropomorphism research relates to today’s children who grow up amid increasingly intelligent and omnipresent technologies, particularly digital voice assistants (e.g., Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri). First, the article reviews a comprehensive body of quantitative as well as qualitative anthropomorphism research and considers it within three different research perspectives: descriptive, normative and explanatory. Following a brief excursus on philosophical pragmatism, the article then discusses each research perspective from a pragmatistic viewpoint, with a special emphasis on child-technology and child-voice-assistant engagements, and it also challenges some popular notions in the literature. These notions include descriptive ‘as if’ parallels (e.g., child behaves ‘as if’ Alexa was a friend), or normative assumptions that human-human engagements are generally superior to human-technology engagements. Instead, the article reviews different examples from the literature suggesting the nature of anthropomorphism may change as humans’ experiential understandings of humanness change, and this may particularly apply to today’s children as their social cognition develops in interaction with technological entities which are increasingly characterized by unprecedented combinations of human and non-human qualities.

Pedagogical approaches surrounding the touchscreen: The child and practitioner perspective

This article reports on the findings of a mixed-methods, interpretive study identifying practitioners’ pedagogical approaches when children aged 3–4 years use touchscreen devices in early years settings in the West Midlands, UK. A multi-site case study approach was adopted involving interviews with 12 practitioners to identify their rationale for using these devices. Coupled with 160 observations of touchscreen practice, this allowed the opportunity to critique intentions with practice, to determine children’s opportunities to play with, and potentially learn from, touchscreen technologies. Capturing child voice was an integral aspect of this study. By providing the opportunity for children to express their views through four focus-group interviews, the study found that there was a distinct difference between children’s and practitioners’ intentions regarding touchscreen play. As a result, practitioners overlooked opportunities to strengthen children’s learning by following their interests. The data were analysed using activity theory as a central theoretical framework. From this analysis, it is argued that pedagogical approaches surrounding touchscreen use in early years settings need to be developed in order to incorporate the child’s voice in decisions which impact on the ways in which they play with these devices.