P2PSTORY: Dataset of Children as Storytellers and Listeners in Peer-to-Peer Interactions

Understanding social-emotional behaviors in storytelling interactions plays a critical role in the development of interactive educational technologies for children. A challenge when designing for such interactions using technology like social robots, virtual agents, and tablets is understanding the social-emotional behaviors pertinent to storytelling—especially when emulating a natural peer-to-peer relation between the child and the technology. We present P2PSTORY, a dataset of young children (5-6 years old) engaging in natural peer-to-peer storytelling interactions with fellow classmates. The dataset consists of rich social behaviors of children without adult supervision, with each participant demonstrating being a storyteller and a listener. The dataset contains 58 video recorded sessions along with a diverse set of behavioral annotations as well as developmental and demographic profiles of each child participant. We describe the main characteristics of the dataset in addition to findings that reveal perceptual differences between adults and children when evaluating the attentiveness of listeners.