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198 Socially Intelligent Agentsis not achieved by the simple control of synthetic characters at a simple actionlevel. Then we will provide some discussion on how to achieve such high leveldiscussions and present some results already obtained.2. ContextTo better inform the design of Teatrix, we performed a set of studies in aPortuguese school called “O Nosso Sonho”. This school’s pedagogical approachfollows the argument that each child must be free to choose her owndaily activities 1 . To do so, “O Nosso Sonho” has several thematic rooms inwhich the children can experience different types of activities. One of suchrooms is dedicated to dramatic games. There, we conducted a set of observationsof children’s story performances. To test different factors influencing theresulting performances, we selected two groups of children of different ages(one group of 4 to 6 years old and another of 7 to 9 years old). With these twogroups, we wanted to observe not only how the children engaged in the storyperformance but also what types of collaboration existed during acting. Thestories performed by both groups were the following fairy tales: “The threelittle pigs”, “Cinderella” and“Hansel and Gretel”.The analysis of the observations was not trivial as interactions in dramaticgames occurred at different levels, and in parallel between different participants.Nevertheless, from the data collected (video recording and notes takenbefore, during and after the performances) we were able to identify severalfactors that influenced, not only the acting, but also the collaboration threadsthat emerged from these performances. These factors were:Age of the children - for the younger group the dramatic games wereimportant not for resulting “play”, but mostly because of the interactionopportunity that emerged from the activity. Young children had difficultyto stay in character and the story itself was not achieved in themajority of cases. In fact, the use of dramatic games at this age groupaims at promoting children’s interactions and also the experiencing of amultitude of different situations that can help such children to deal withtheir inner fears [1]. Collaboration, inside or outside the story, occurredrather occasionally and usually in situations where two friends interactedwith each other. Differently, the older group was more prone to stay incharacter and the children’s interactions were mostly originated by theplot itself. In this group, the collaboration occurred not only inside thestory between characters but also as a way to coordinate their positions,turns, props, etc.Inter-relationships - during the performances children, specially the youngerones, had the tendency to bring their daily relationships into the story,

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