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Infant discrimination of humanoid robots

Recently, extremely humanlike robots called “androids” have been developed, some of which are already being used in the field of entertainment. In the context of psychological studies, androids are expected to be used in the future as fully controllable human stimuli to investigate human nature. In...

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Autores principales: Matsuda, Goh, Ishiguro, Hiroshi, Hiraki, Kazuo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4585262/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26441772
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01397
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author Matsuda, Goh
Ishiguro, Hiroshi
Hiraki, Kazuo
author_facet Matsuda, Goh
Ishiguro, Hiroshi
Hiraki, Kazuo
author_sort Matsuda, Goh
collection PubMed
description Recently, extremely humanlike robots called “androids” have been developed, some of which are already being used in the field of entertainment. In the context of psychological studies, androids are expected to be used in the future as fully controllable human stimuli to investigate human nature. In this study, we used an android to examine infant discrimination ability between human beings and non-human agents. Participants (N = 42 infants) were assigned to three groups based on their age, i.e., 6- to 8-month-olds, 9- to 11-month-olds, and 12- to 14-month-olds, and took part in a preferential looking paradigm. Of three types of agents involved in the paradigm—a human, an android modeled on the human, and a mechanical-looking robot made from the android—two at a time were presented side-by-side as they performed a grasping action. Infants’ looking behavior was measured using an eye tracking system, and the amount of time spent focusing on each of three areas of interest (face, goal, and body) was analyzed. Results showed that all age groups predominantly looked at the robot and at the face area, and that infants aged over 9 months watched the goal area for longer than the body area. There was no difference in looking times and areas focused on between the human and the android. These findings suggest that 6- to 14-month-olds are unable to discriminate between the human and the android, although they can distinguish the mechanical robot from the human.
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spelling pubmed-45852622015-10-05 Infant discrimination of humanoid robots Matsuda, Goh Ishiguro, Hiroshi Hiraki, Kazuo Front Psychol Psychology Recently, extremely humanlike robots called “androids” have been developed, some of which are already being used in the field of entertainment. In the context of psychological studies, androids are expected to be used in the future as fully controllable human stimuli to investigate human nature. In this study, we used an android to examine infant discrimination ability between human beings and non-human agents. Participants (N = 42 infants) were assigned to three groups based on their age, i.e., 6- to 8-month-olds, 9- to 11-month-olds, and 12- to 14-month-olds, and took part in a preferential looking paradigm. Of three types of agents involved in the paradigm—a human, an android modeled on the human, and a mechanical-looking robot made from the android—two at a time were presented side-by-side as they performed a grasping action. Infants’ looking behavior was measured using an eye tracking system, and the amount of time spent focusing on each of three areas of interest (face, goal, and body) was analyzed. Results showed that all age groups predominantly looked at the robot and at the face area, and that infants aged over 9 months watched the goal area for longer than the body area. There was no difference in looking times and areas focused on between the human and the android. These findings suggest that 6- to 14-month-olds are unable to discriminate between the human and the android, although they can distinguish the mechanical robot from the human. Frontiers Media S.A. 2015-09-22 /pmc/articles/PMC4585262/ /pubmed/26441772 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01397 Text en Copyright © 2015 Matsuda, Ishiguro and Hiraki. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Matsuda, Goh
Ishiguro, Hiroshi
Hiraki, Kazuo
Infant discrimination of humanoid robots
title Infant discrimination of humanoid robots
title_full Infant discrimination of humanoid robots
title_fullStr Infant discrimination of humanoid robots
title_full_unstemmed Infant discrimination of humanoid robots
title_short Infant discrimination of humanoid robots
title_sort infant discrimination of humanoid robots
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4585262/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26441772
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01397
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