Abstract
This article is a commentary on Hoffman 8 Zhao’s “A Primer for Conducting Experiments in Human-robot Interaction.” I argue that a too-narrow view of HRI methodology fails to address the dynamic systems properties of interaction. Furthermore, the focus on addressing the so-called “replicability crisis” makes field studies next to impossible, inhibits interdisciplinarity and methodological pluralism, and draws our attention and resources away from the fact that contexts, people, cultures, expectations, and interaction itself may influence how social signals are interpreted. Therefore, in spite of its great benefits, the “Primer” may not be taken as an instruction on “how to carry out research in HRI” in general.
Highlights
This article is a commentary on Hoffman & Zhao’s “A Primer for Conducting Experiments in Human-robot Interaction.” I argue that a too-narrow view of HRI methodology fails to address the dynamic systems properties of interaction
What I would like to argue for in this commentary is that the methodology proposed in the “Primer” restricts the object of study too much to account for the object of study of HRI, namely, human-robot interaction
Given what we know about the effects of participants’ backgrounds (e.g., Strait et al [2015]), contexts (e.g., Butler et al [2019]), environments (e.g., Mutlu and Forlizzi [2008]) and framing (e.g., Paepcke and Takayama [2010]), many controlled HRI studies are unlikely to replicate with other populations, other collaborative tasks, or other framings anyway—we just do not understand human-robot interactions well enough yet to make those kinds of predictions
Summary
What I would like to argue for in this commentary is that the methodology proposed in the “Primer” restricts the object of study too much to account for the object of study of HRI, namely, human-robot interaction.
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