Playing REMind significantly increased children's perceived self-efficacy for defending peers¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · design r2 · q2 · i2 medium
Currency · newest study 2026 · checked against its sources 2026-10-20 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i2 Children's perceived self-efficacy for defending increased significantly from pre-test to post-test after playing REMind, with a medium-to-large effect size. → Elaheh Sanoubari 2026

Evidence¶

Elaheh Sanoubari 2026¶

Elaheh Sanoubari, Neil Fernandes, Keith Rebello, Alicia Pan, Andrew Houston, and Kerstin Dautenhahn. (2026). Play-Testing REMind: Evaluating an Educational Robot-Mediated Role-Play Game. https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.00300 doi:10.48550/arxiv.2604.00300

q2 · i2 · design · r2

Pre/post paired-samples t-test in the play-testing study with 18 children aged 9-10. Self-efficacy was measured with one sliding-scale item asking "How easy or hard would it be for you to defend the victim". Means rose from 39.2 to 53.9, with "Cohen's d = 0.74".

"Children's perceived self-efficacy significantly increased from pre-test (M = 39.2, SD = 20.5) to post-test (M = 53.9, SD = 21.3), t(17) = 3.12, p = .003, following the intervention. Cohen's d = 0.74 indicated a medium-to-large effect size."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Proximal goals and ability attributional feedback for early learning raise self-efficacy more than distant goals and effort feedback, by a review's report of earlier studies — the general claim this finding bears on, with the studies behind it
• REMind did not significantly change children's expectations that defending would help the victim feel better — related
• Children who chose to comfort the victim reported higher self-efficacy and victim-help expectations than those who chose to confront the bully (descriptive, imbalanced groups) — related
• During REMind, nearly all children reported feeling sad for the victim and attributed bystander inaction mainly to low confidence or fear of retaliation — related
• REMind did not significantly increase measured empathy, but baseline human-directed empathy correlated positively with robot-directed empathy — related
• After REMind, children's expectations that confronting a bully would stop the bullying shifted toward a calibrated midpoint — related