Human- or Machine-like Music Assistive Robots Effects on Fluency and Memory Recall

Abstract

Assistive robots are expected to contribute to the solution of major societal problems in healthcare, such as the increasing number of elderly who need informal and professional care over a long period of time. Most of the research focuses on the development of human-like robots to facilitate human-robot interaction and strengthen the social, cognitive and affective processes. However, there are some possible downsides of this type of "robot humanizing", like raising high expectations and causing incorrect mental models of the robots. Machine-like robots, on the other hand, may help to build more realistic mental models and expectations but might bring about less fluent interactions and less pronounced experiences (i.e., less to remember). To test if a human-like robot indeed brings about better interaction fluency and memory recall, we designed two types of robots for a joint human-robot music listening activity: A human-like and a machine-like robot (Pepper). Thirty students participated in the experiment managed by a Wizard-of-Oz set-up. As expected, the human-like robot proved to perform better in terms of fluency and memory recall. Currently, we are preparing a follow-up experiment, consisting of longer sessions with the elderly to see whether this effect persists for this age group and how far the human- or machine-likeness influences the elderly's understanding and expectations of the robot's capabilities.