A Disclosure Intimacy Rating Scale for Child-Agent Interaction

Reciprocal self-disclosure is an integral part of social bonding between humans that has received little attention in the field of human-agent interaction. To study how children react to self-disclosures of a virtual agent, we developed a disclosure intimacy rating scale that can be used to assess both the intimacy level of agent disclosures and that of child disclosures. To this end, 72 disclosures were derived from a biography created for the agent and rated by 10 university students for intimacy. A principal component analysis and subsequent k-means clustering of the rated statements resulted in four distinct levels of intimacy based on the risk of a negative appraisal and the impact of betrayal by the listener. This validated rating scale can be readily used with other agents or interfaces.