Table 1.

Comparison of example data sources for children's conversational agents.

Data source	Example references	Advantages	Disadvantages
Books	Children's Book Test (Hill et al., 2016)	• Easy to collect • Much data available • Available for social interactions and conversations at different times in history	• Majority of content written as narrative to be read, not spoken conversation • Interpretation of children's conversations by adult content creators • May lack nuanced contemporary speech patterns
Films	MovieQA (Tapaswi et al., 2016)	• Easy to collect • Available for social interactions and conversations at different times in history • Content meant to be spoken conversation	• Can perpetuate negative stereotypes from the film industry • Interpretation of children's conversations by adult content creators
Real-world interactions	Curiosity-evoking virtual agent (Paranjape et al., 2018)	• Available for social interactions and conversations at different times in history • Reflects children's actual speech in social interactions • Flexibility to include diverse representation • Control over tone and purpose • Content meant to be spoken conversation	• Painstakingly time-intensive • Potentially costly • Pronunciation challenges of young populations