What color are the fish’s scales? - Exploring parents’ and children’s natural interactions with a child-friendly virtual agent during storybook reading

Aug 29, 2026

With increasing integration of AI-powered agents into early childhood educational technologies, how caregivers and young children interact with these tools—together or separately—remains underexplored. This study examines natural triadic interactions among a parent, a child, and a child-friendly virtual rabbit character, Floppy, during storybook reading sessions. Across 18 parent-child dyads over four to six weeks, Floppy generated most prompts, and parent-driven turns dominated conversational participation while children also contributed substantial dialogue. Over half of parents observed emotional connections.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages11

Reading Time28 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Parental smartphone effects on parent-child interaction

Opportunities for learning when devices are used jointly

Children’s perceptions and use of smart technology

Focus on conversational agents for early literacy

Method (study overview)

Floppy virtual agent and smart speaker app

Participants and session design

Interaction breakdown across dyad types

Findings

Prompt-initiated conversations and turn-taking patterns

Parent comfort and mediation strategies

Emotional connections with the virtual character

Discussion and implications

Defining the role of virtual agents in triadic interaction

"What color are the fish’s scales?" Exploring parents’ and children’s natural interactions with a child-friendly virtual agent during storybook reading Grace C. Lin Ilana Schoenfeld Meredith Thompson Yiting Xia Cigdem Uz-Bilgin [gcl@mit.edu](gcl@mit.edu)[ ](gcl@mit.edu)[ilanasch@mit.edu](ilanasch@mit.edu)[ ](ilanasch@mit.edu)[meredith@mit.edu](meredith@mit.edu)[ ](meredith@mit.edu)[yitingxia23@gmail.com](yitingxia23@gmail.com)[ ](yitingxia23@gmail.com)[cigdemuz@mit.edu](cigdemuz@mit.edu)[ ](cigdemuz@mit.edu)Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA Kathryn Leech The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA [leechk@unc.edu](leechk@unc.edu) ABSTRACT With increasing integration of AI-powered agents into educational technologies available to families with young children, the landscape of how caregivers and children interact together or separately with these technologies is underexplored. Understanding the nature of these interactions could critically inform the design of educational technologies to facilitate children’s learning, research methods for use in future studies involving adult-child dyad technology use, and policy decisions regarding the use of educational technology with young children. In this study, we explored the natural interactions among parent, child, and a child-friendly virtual rabbit character named Floppy. Floppy is a virtual agent in a Smart Speaker app that models adult dialogic reading and conversational strategies for use with young children (ages 4-6 years) . Over a span of four to six weeks, 18 parent-child dyads read The Rainbow Fish, a classic children’s book by Marcus Pfister, during 24 at-home, remote sessions with Floppy. Of the 189 conversations generated during this time, 125 were initiated by a prompt spoken by Floppy. Though there were some variations among the dyads, across all conversations, parent-driven interactions made up 63% of the conversations, followed by child-driven conversations at 15.3%, Floppy-driven at 14.3%, and Floppy-and-parent-driven at 7.4% . A select few parents were more comfortable having their children interact directly with Floppy, whereas the majority of the parents would direct children’s attention back to themselves or help children understand the questions by repeating or reformulating Floppy’s prompts. More than half of the parents reported that their children formed emotional connections with the virtual character. These findings point to a This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License. IDC’22, June 27–30, 2022, Braga, Portugal © 2022 Copyright held by the owner/author(s) . ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-9197-9/22/06 . [https://doi.org/10.1145/3501712.3529734](https://doi.org/10.1145/3501712.3529734) need to clearly define the role of virtual agents, even ones with limited AI, in this type of triadic interaction. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Human computer interaction (HCI); • Social and professional topics → Children. KEYWORDS triadic interaction; early literacy; virtual agent ACM Reference Format: Grace C. Lin, Ilana Schoenfeld, Meredith Thompson, Yiting Xia, Cigdem Uz-Bilgin, and Kathryn Leech. 2022. "What color are the fish’s scales?"Exploring parents’ and children’s natural interactions with a child-friendly virtual agent during storybook reading. In Interaction Design and Children (IDC ’22), June 27–30, 2022, Braga, Portugal. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 11 pages. [https://doi.org/10.1145/3501712.3529734](https://doi.org/10.1145/3501712.3529734) 1 INTRODUCTION The ubiquitous nature of smartphones has affected family time and parent-child interactions. Many researchers warn against the distractions and negative consequences of parental smartphone use. For example, an observational study of caregiver-child dyads in natural settings (e.g., parks and shopping malls) found that caregivers engaged in less joint attention with

FAQs

What virtual agent was used during the storybook reading sessions?

The study used Floppy, a child-friendly virtual rabbit character in a Smart Speaker app that models adult dialogic reading and conversational strategies.

How were the storybook sessions conducted and for how long?

Eighteen parent-child dyads read The Rainbow Fish over four to six weeks through 24 remote at-home sessions with Floppy.

What kinds of conversational turns dominated during the interactions?

Across conversations, parent-driven interactions accounted for 63%, followed by child-driven (15.3%), Floppy-driven (14.3%), and combined parent-and-Floppy-driven turns (7.4%).

What did parents report about their children’s engagement with the virtual character?

More than half of the parents reported that their children formed emotional connections with the virtual character, though most parents guided attention back to themselves or helped interpret Floppy’s prompts.

Aug 29, 2026

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