Sjef Fransen

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Sjef Fransen is a researcher whose work sits at the intersection of human-robot interaction and developmental psychology, with a particular focus on using social robots as tools for child evaluation. His most cited paper, "Let robots do the talking" (2010, 5 citations), introduces a novel robotic intervention protocol that leverages a social robot as a proxy test facilitator. This method is designed to prompt, ask, and help children during assessments, encouraging them to verbalize more freely than they might with a human evaluator. Fransen's major contribution lies in demonstrating how robots can reduce social anxiety and bias in data collection, offering a more standardized and engaging approach to obtaining verbalization data from young participants. While his citation count is modest, the conceptual impact of his work is significant, as it pioneers a pathway for integrating robotics into sensitive clinical and educational settings. His research continues to inspire new protocols for child-robot interaction, highlighting the potential for robots to serve not just as tools, but as empathetic intermediaries in human assessment.