Abstract
The current study was designed to investigate how the automatic spatial orientation of attention induced by the perception of another agent's orientation of attention is modulated by the social nature of the other agent. Modified versions of the Posner task, using a real or schematic face with eyes or head looking toward the left or the right before a to-be-detected target appears on one side of the screen have been used to demonstrate a reduction of reaction time (RT) for target detection when the gaze is directed toward the target, even though the cue is not informative. We compared the effect of two agents, the humanoid robotic platform Nao and a real human, using head turn to cue the spatial orientation of attention. Our results reproduced the typical Posner effect, with reduced RT to valid compared to invalid spatial cues. RT increased when no spatial information was provided, interpreted as an increased difficulty to disengage from a direct gaze. RT was also increased when the robot was used instead of the human face and when the eyes of the stimuli were blacked out. Both effects were interpreted as resulting from an increased difficulty to disengage attention from the central stimulus because of its novelty. In all experiments, there was no interaction between cue validity and cue agent, implying that the exact nature of the human-like agent didn't have an effect on the automatic spatial orientation of attention. Altogether, our results imply that a humanoid face is as potent as a human face to trigger an automatic orientation of spatial attention.
Highlights
Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impairments in communication, social interactions and behaviors
Response time for the robot was significantly longer than for the human (330 vs. 322 ms) and for the eye hidden than the eye visible paradigms (337 vs. 316 ms). t-tests showed that pairwise comparisons between all pairs of cue validity were significant (p < 0.001), with the longest reaction time (RT) for neutral and the shortest RT for invalid cues
Response times when the agent used as precue and cue were not congruent corresponded to complex interactions between, and not simple addition of, cognitive processes. This experiment investigated whether the intentional nature of an agent, a human or a humanoid robot, influenced the exogenous orientation of attention by spatial cues indicating the direction of attention using orientation of the head relative to the torso
Summary
Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impairments in communication, social interactions and behaviors. Current care strategies attempt to teach adapted skills soon after diagnosis, and intensive early intervention can significantly improve the communicative skills in pre-school children. These interventions rely on the use of human therapists, and the use of robots in alternative therapies of autism has been under scrutiny for decades (Robins et al, 2004). The underlying assumption was that these agents would both bypass autistic children’s avoidance of social interaction and make use of their attraction for predictable objects These robots with human-like appearance would possess all necessary features to convey social signals: a face with mouth to express emotions, eyes to inform about direction of attention, arms, and hands to support physical interactions. Anecdotal observations notwithstanding (Kozima et al, 2004, 2007), there is a lack of empirical studies in support of the idea that these robots would be beneficial in autism therapies (Diehl et al, 2012), and directly addressing this assertion with tools of social cognitive neuroscience is at the core of our research program (Chaminade and Cheng, 2009)
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