The presence of artificial agents in our everyday lives is continuously increasing. Hence, the qu... more The presence of artificial agents in our everyday lives is continuously increasing. Hence, the question of how human social cognition mechanisms are activated when we interact with artificial agents, such as humanoid robots, has been asked. One interesting question is whether humans perceive humanoid robots as mere artefacts (interpreting their behavior with reference to their function, thereby adopting the design stance) or as intentional agents (interpreting their behavior with reference to mental states, thereby adopting the intentional stance). Due to their human-like appearance, humanoid robots might be capable of evoking the intentional stance. On the other hand, the knowledge that humanoid robots are only artefacts should call for adopting the design stance. Thus, observing a humanoid robot might evoke a cognitive conflict between the natural tendency of adopting the intentional stance and the knowledge about the actual nature of robots, which should elicit the design stance....
Understanding the human cognitive processes involved in the interaction with artificial agents is... more Understanding the human cognitive processes involved in the interaction with artificial agents is crucial for designing socially capable robots. During social interactions, humans tend to explain and predict others’ behavior adopting the intentional stance, that is, assuming that mental states drive behavior. However, the question of whether humans would adopt the same strategy with artificial agents remains unanswered. The present study aimed at identifying whether the type of behavior exhibited by the robot has an impact on the attribution of mentalistic explanations of behavior. We employed the Instance Questionnaire (ISQ) pre and post-observation of two types of behavior (decisive or hesitant). We found that decisive behavior, with rare and unexpected “hesitant” behaviors lead to more mentalistic attributions relative to behavior that was primarily hesitant. Findings suggest that higher expectations regarding the robots’ capabilities and the characteristics of the behavior might...
Designing artificial agents that can closely imitate human behavior, might influence humans in pe... more Designing artificial agents that can closely imitate human behavior, might influence humans in perceiving them as intentional agents. Nonetheless, the factors that are crucial for an artificial agent to be perceived as an animated and anthropomorphic being still need to be addressed. In the current study, we investigated some of the factors that might affect the perception of a robot's behavior as human-like or intentional. To meet this aim, seventy-nine participants were exposed to two different behaviors of a humanoid robot under two different instructions. Before the experiment, participants' biases towards robotics as well as their personality traits were assessed. Our results suggest that participants’ sensitivity to human-likeness relies more on their expectations rather than on perceptual cues.
Humans predict others’ behavior based on mental state inferences and expectations created on prev... more Humans predict others’ behavior based on mental state inferences and expectations created on previous interactions. On the brink of the introduction of artificial agents in our social environment, the question of whether humans would use similar cognitive mechanisms to interact with these agents gains relevance. Recent research showed that people could indeed explain the behavior of a robot in mentalistic terms. However, there is scarce evidence regarding how expectations modulate the adoption of these mentalistic explanations. The present study aims at creating a questionnaire that measures expectations regarding the capabilities of the robot and testing whether these priors modulate the adoption of the intentional stance toward artificial agents. We found that individual expectations might influence the adoption of mentalistic explanations. After a show period of observation, participants with higher expectations tended to explain iCub’s behavior in mentalistic terms; meanwhile, p...
In daily social interactions, we explain and predict behaviours of other humans by referring to m... more In daily social interactions, we explain and predict behaviours of other humans by referring to mental states that we assume underlie their behaviours. In other words, we adopt the intentional stance (Dennett, 1971) towards other humans. However, today we also routinely interact with artificial agents: from Apple’s Siri to GPS navigation systems. In the near future, we will casually interact with robots. Since we consider artificial agents to have no mental states, we might not adopt the intentional stance towards them, and this might result in not attuning socially with them. This paper addresses the question of whether adopting the intentional stance towards artificial agents is possible. We propose a new method to examine if people have adopted the intentional stance towards an artificial agent (humanoid robot). The method consists in a questionnaire that probes participants’ stance by requiring them to choose the likelihood of an explanation (mentalistic vs. mechanistic) of beha...
Gaze behavior of humanoid robots is an efficient mechanism for cueing our spatial orienting, but ... more Gaze behavior of humanoid robots is an efficient mechanism for cueing our spatial orienting, but less is known about the cognitive-affective consequences of robots responding to human directional cues. Here, we examined how the extent to which a humanoid robot (iCub) avatar directed its gaze to the same objects as our participants affected engagement with the robot, subsequent gaze-cueing, and subjective ratings of the robot's characteristic traits. In a gaze-contingent eyetracking task, participants were asked to indicate a preference for one of two objects with their gaze while an iCub avatar was presented between the object photographs. In one condition, the iCub then shifted its gaze toward the object chosen by a participant in 80% of the trials (joint condition) and in the other condition it looked at the opposite object 80% of the time (disjoint condition). Based on the literature in human-human social cognition, we took the speed with which the participants looked back at...
The presence of artificial agents in our everyday lives is continuously increasing. Hence, the qu... more The presence of artificial agents in our everyday lives is continuously increasing. Hence, the question of how human social cognition mechanisms are activated when we interact with artificial agents, such as humanoid robots, has been asked. One interesting question is whether humans perceive humanoid robots as mere artefacts (interpreting their behavior with reference to their function, thereby adopting the design stance) or as intentional agents (interpreting their behavior with reference to mental states, thereby adopting the intentional stance). Due to their human-like appearance, humanoid robots might be capable of evoking the intentional stance. On the other hand, the knowledge that humanoid robots are only artefacts should call for adopting the design stance. Thus, observing a humanoid robot might evoke a cognitive conflict between the natural tendency of adopting the intentional stance and the knowledge about the actual nature of robots, which should elicit the design stance....
Understanding the human cognitive processes involved in the interaction with artificial agents is... more Understanding the human cognitive processes involved in the interaction with artificial agents is crucial for designing socially capable robots. During social interactions, humans tend to explain and predict others’ behavior adopting the intentional stance, that is, assuming that mental states drive behavior. However, the question of whether humans would adopt the same strategy with artificial agents remains unanswered. The present study aimed at identifying whether the type of behavior exhibited by the robot has an impact on the attribution of mentalistic explanations of behavior. We employed the Instance Questionnaire (ISQ) pre and post-observation of two types of behavior (decisive or hesitant). We found that decisive behavior, with rare and unexpected “hesitant” behaviors lead to more mentalistic attributions relative to behavior that was primarily hesitant. Findings suggest that higher expectations regarding the robots’ capabilities and the characteristics of the behavior might...
Designing artificial agents that can closely imitate human behavior, might influence humans in pe... more Designing artificial agents that can closely imitate human behavior, might influence humans in perceiving them as intentional agents. Nonetheless, the factors that are crucial for an artificial agent to be perceived as an animated and anthropomorphic being still need to be addressed. In the current study, we investigated some of the factors that might affect the perception of a robot's behavior as human-like or intentional. To meet this aim, seventy-nine participants were exposed to two different behaviors of a humanoid robot under two different instructions. Before the experiment, participants' biases towards robotics as well as their personality traits were assessed. Our results suggest that participants’ sensitivity to human-likeness relies more on their expectations rather than on perceptual cues.
Humans predict others’ behavior based on mental state inferences and expectations created on prev... more Humans predict others’ behavior based on mental state inferences and expectations created on previous interactions. On the brink of the introduction of artificial agents in our social environment, the question of whether humans would use similar cognitive mechanisms to interact with these agents gains relevance. Recent research showed that people could indeed explain the behavior of a robot in mentalistic terms. However, there is scarce evidence regarding how expectations modulate the adoption of these mentalistic explanations. The present study aims at creating a questionnaire that measures expectations regarding the capabilities of the robot and testing whether these priors modulate the adoption of the intentional stance toward artificial agents. We found that individual expectations might influence the adoption of mentalistic explanations. After a show period of observation, participants with higher expectations tended to explain iCub’s behavior in mentalistic terms; meanwhile, p...
In daily social interactions, we explain and predict behaviours of other humans by referring to m... more In daily social interactions, we explain and predict behaviours of other humans by referring to mental states that we assume underlie their behaviours. In other words, we adopt the intentional stance (Dennett, 1971) towards other humans. However, today we also routinely interact with artificial agents: from Apple’s Siri to GPS navigation systems. In the near future, we will casually interact with robots. Since we consider artificial agents to have no mental states, we might not adopt the intentional stance towards them, and this might result in not attuning socially with them. This paper addresses the question of whether adopting the intentional stance towards artificial agents is possible. We propose a new method to examine if people have adopted the intentional stance towards an artificial agent (humanoid robot). The method consists in a questionnaire that probes participants’ stance by requiring them to choose the likelihood of an explanation (mentalistic vs. mechanistic) of beha...
Gaze behavior of humanoid robots is an efficient mechanism for cueing our spatial orienting, but ... more Gaze behavior of humanoid robots is an efficient mechanism for cueing our spatial orienting, but less is known about the cognitive-affective consequences of robots responding to human directional cues. Here, we examined how the extent to which a humanoid robot (iCub) avatar directed its gaze to the same objects as our participants affected engagement with the robot, subsequent gaze-cueing, and subjective ratings of the robot's characteristic traits. In a gaze-contingent eyetracking task, participants were asked to indicate a preference for one of two objects with their gaze while an iCub avatar was presented between the object photographs. In one condition, the iCub then shifted its gaze toward the object chosen by a participant in 80% of the trials (joint condition) and in the other condition it looked at the opposite object 80% of the time (disjoint condition). Based on the literature in human-human social cognition, we took the speed with which the participants looked back at...
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