Luca M. Leisten
Papers
2
Total Citations
4
H-Index
2
About
Luca M. Leisten investigates the intersection of developmental psychology and human-robot interaction, focusing on how children perceive, reciprocate, and build relationships with social robots in educational contexts. Their work reveals that teachers distinguish between “soft” and “hard” social robots, assigning distinct competency profiles to each—a finding that challenges one-size-fits-all approaches to educational technology. In a key study on children’s reciprocity and relationship formation across age, Leisten demonstrated that developmental stages significantly shape how children engage with robots, with younger children showing more immediate, affective reciprocity while older children exhibit more strategic, rule-based interactions. Though early in their career, Leisten’s contributions are already shaping the design of adaptive learning technologies, with each of their most-cited papers accumulating 2 citations and laying groundwork for future research. Their work is notable for bridging social robotics with developmental science, offering empirical evidence that robot design must account for children’s evolving cognitive and social capacities. Leisten’s research holds promise for creating more effective, age-appropriate educational robots that support diverse learning outcomes.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
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- 2