Supplementary Material for: Alexa, What Are You? Exploring Primary School Children’s Ontological Perceptions of Digital Voice Assistants in Open Interactions

Today’s children grow up in an environment that is increasingly characterized by digital voice assistants (DVAs), such as Alexa, Siri, or the Google Assistant. This paper argues that any attempt to investigate children’s interactions with, and perceptions of, DVAs should be based on the theoretical grounds of an ontological framework that considers children’s genuine understanding of what it means to be human and what it means to be a machine. Based on focus groups and a gamified data collection design, our empirical inquiry applied qualitative methods to explore primary school children’s (n =27, age range: 6–10 years, average age: 8.6 years) open interactions with DVAs. In particular, our focus was on how DVAs were embedded in children’s general ontological belief system, and how children interpreted certain aspects of DVAs’ interactive capabilities as being genuinely humanoid or non-humanoid. On the one hand, our findings suggest that children’s interactions with DVAs might be more an end in itself than a means to an end, meaning that children primarily interact with DVAs for the sake of engaging excitement instead of using the devices’ utilitarian functionalities. On the other hand, we found that children in our sample held firm ontological beliefs about the distinct nature of humans and machines, whilst interpreting certain aspects of DVAs’ interactive capabilities as being genuinely humanoid (e.g., non-responsiveness, delayed responses, inaccuracy) and non-humanoid (e.g., permanent responsiveness, promptness, accuracy, limited conversational capacities, lack of common sense, standardized responses) at the same time.当今儿童成长于一个日益以数字语音助手（Digital Voice Assistants, DVAs）为典型特征的环境中，此类助手包括Alexa、Siri及Google Assistant等。本文提出，任何旨在探究儿童与数字语音助手的互动行为及其认知感知的研究，都应立足于存在论框架的理论基础，该框架需考量儿童对“何为人类”与“何为机器”的本真理解。本研究依托焦点小组访谈与游戏化数据采集方案，采用质性研究方法，对27名小学生（年龄区间6至10岁，平均年龄8.6岁）与数字语音助手的开放式互动展开探究。具体而言，本研究聚焦两大核心议题：一是数字语音助手如何融入儿童的整体存在论信念体系，二是儿童如何将数字语音助手的部分互动功能解读为类人或非类人特征。一方面，研究结果显示，儿童与数字语音助手的互动更多是目的本身，而非达成其他目标的手段——即儿童主要为获取沉浸式互动乐趣而与助手交流，而非利用设备的实用功能。另一方面，本研究样本中的儿童对人类与机器的本质差异持有坚定的存在论信念，但同时又会将数字语音助手的部分互动功能分别归为类人特征（如无响应、响应延迟、不准确）与非类人特征（如持续响应、响应迅捷、准确无误、对话能力有限、缺乏常识、应答标准化）。