Dialogue Agents that Share Family Information to Strengthen Grandparent-Grandchild Relationships
Seiya Mitsuno, Midori Ban, Hiroshi Ishiguro, Yuichiro Yoshikawa
TLDR
A dialogue agent helps older adults reduce social isolation by sharing family information to strengthen grandparent-grandchild relationships.
Key contributions
- Introduces a chatbot agent exchanging daily information between grandparents and grandchildren.
- Empirical experiment conducted with 108 grandparent-grandchild pairs over ten days.
- Agent interaction increased willingness to converse and strengthened psychological connection.
- Daily interactions with the agent were associated with reduced anxiety in both generations.
Why it matters
This paper offers a novel approach to combating social isolation in older adults by leveraging AI to foster intergenerational family connections. It demonstrates how sharing personal information via a dialogue agent can enhance relationships and reduce anxiety for both grandparents and grandchildren. This provides valuable insights for designing supportive AI.
Original Abstract
Social isolation among older adults has become a critical concern, as reduced opportunities for conversation and weakened family relationships negatively affect mental health. This study proposes a dialogue agent that supports older adults by fostering both a relationship with the agent and a relationship with their grandchild through sharing everyday information. The agent operates on a chatbot platform and engages in daily conversations with older adults and their grandchildren, exchanging information gathered from each party to enhance conversational engagement and social connection. We conducted a ten-day empirical experiment with 108 grandparent-grandchild pairs. The results suggest that older adults became more willing to interact with the proposed agent, which shared information about their grandchildren, and that the psychological connection between grandparents and grandchildren was strengthened. Furthermore, daily interactions with the agent were associated with reduced anxiety in both older adults and their grandchildren. These findings indicate that a dialogue agent that shares personal information can be an effective approach to supporting older adults by simultaneously offering conversational opportunities and promoting family connectedness. Overall, this study provides valuable insights into the design of dialogue agents that effectively address social isolation among older adults.
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