Abstract
Attentional control does not have fix functioning and can be strongly impacted by the presence of other human beings or humanoid robots. In two studies, this phenomenon was investigated while focusing exclusively on robot gaze as a potential determinant of attentional control along with the role of participants’ anthropomorphic inferences toward the robot. In study 1, we expected and found higher interference in trials including a direct robot gaze compared to an averted gaze on a task measuring attentional control (Eriksen flanker task). Participants’ anthropomorphic inferences about the social robot mediated this interference. In study 2, we found that averted gazes congruent with the correct answer (same task as study 1) facilitated performance. Again, this effect was mediated by anthropomorphic inferences. These two studies show the importance of anthropomorphic robotic gaze on human cognitive processing, especially attentional control, and also open new avenues of research in social robotics.
Highlights
In the coming decades, millions of people worldwide may benefit from the presence of humanoid robots
Our results show that robot direct gaze results in more time to produce a correct answer indicating a stronger attentional interference in this critical condition, which replicates and extends Conty and colleagues’ earlier findings to robotic gaze [22]
Refraining from processing robot eye contact, like human eye contact, seems at least as difficult as processing Flankers interference, otherwise the presence of direct gaze would not have influenced the time to produce a correct answer. This first finding suggests that robotic direct gaze is automatically processed as a social signal [1, 94]
Summary
Millions of people worldwide may benefit from the presence of humanoid robots (e.g., to ensure support to the elderly, disabled people, or pupils). Despite this unstoppable trend, research has only scratched the surface of the cognitive impact of Human-Robot. Interaction (HRI) especially on the fundamental process that is attentional section/inhibition. Attentional selection/inhibition processes allow us to sort through the information that enters the system and to discriminate between useful and unnecessary information for the current activity. ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction, Vol 10, No 4, Article 35.
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