Papers
7
Total Citations
129
H-Index
6
About
Maha Elgarf is a pioneering researcher at the intersection of child-robot interaction (cHRI), creativity, and educational technology. Her work centers on harnessing social robots as tools to nurture and stimulate creativity in children, with a particular focus on collaborative storytelling as a vehicle for imaginative development. Elgarf's most cited work, "Once Upon a Story" (2021, 28 citations), exemplifies her signature approach: designing meaningful, evaluable interactions between children and social robots within narrative contexts. She has progressively advanced this agenda by integrating large language models into robot-driven storytelling, as seen in her 2024 paper (22 citations), reflecting her commitment to leveraging cutting-edge AI for child development. A distinctive thread running through Elgarf's research is her innovative application of Regulatory Focus Theory to cHRI, examining how promotion- versus prevention-oriented robot behaviors shape children's creativity, motivation, and trust. Her studies on persuasion and trust dynamics further underscore her nuanced understanding of child psychology in human-robot contexts. With a cumulative citation count exceeding 129 across seven key works, Elgarf's contributions have meaningfully shaped how researchers and educators think about socially intelligent robots as creative collaborators for young learners.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1Once Upon a Story28 citations · 2021
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5Reward Seeking or Loss Aversion?14 citations · 2021
- 6Can a Social Robot Be Persuasive Without Losing Children's Trust?14 citations · 2020
- 7