Young Users' Perception of a Social Robot Displaying Familiarity and Eliciting Disclosure

 Establishing a positive relationship between a user and a system is
considered important or even necessary in applications of social robots or other
computational artifacts which require long-term engagement. We discuss sever-
al experiments investigating the effects of specific relational verbal behaviors
within the broader context of developing a social robot for long-term support of
self-management improvement in children with Type 1 diabetes. Our results
show that displaying familiarity with a user as well as eliciting the user’s self-
disclosure in off-activity talk contribute to the user’s perception of the social
robot as a friend. We also observed increased commitment to interaction suc-
cess related to familiarity display and increased interest in further interactions
related to off-activity talk.