Abstract
Most experimental protocols examining joint attention with the gaze cueing paradigm are “observational” and “offline”, thereby not involving social interaction. We examined whether within a naturalistic online interaction, real-time eye contact influences the gaze cueing effect (GCE). We embedded gaze cueing in an interactive protocol with the iCub humanoid robot. This has the advantage of ecological validity combined with excellent experimental control. Critically, before averting the gaze, iCub either established eye contact or not, a manipulation enabled by an algorithm detecting position of the human eyes. For non-predictive gaze cueing procedure (Experiment 1), only the eye contact condition elicited GCE, while for counter-predictive procedure (Experiment 2), only the condition with no eye contact induced GCE. These results reveal an interactive effect of strategic (gaze validity) and social (eye contact) top-down components on the reflexive orienting of attention induced by gaze cues. More generally, we propose that naturalistic protocols with an embodied presence of an agent can cast a new light on mechanisms of social cognition.
Highlights
Joint attention (JA) is an important mechanism of non-verbal communication for social interactions
A positive gaze cueing effect (GCE) means that participants responded faster to validly- compared to invalidly-cued targets, indicating that participants oriented their attention to the location gazed-at by the robot
A negative value of the GCE reflects, on the other hand, faster responses to invalidly- compared to validly-cued targets, suggesting that participants oriented their attention to the opposite direction than that of iCub’s gaze
Summary
Joint attention (JA) is an important mechanism of non-verbal communication for social interactions. Studies investigated the effect of eye contact on attentional processes, by employing measures of either oculomotor behavior for screen-based paradigms[22,23,24] or even during real-time social interactions[25]. Recent approaches to the study of the mechanisms of social cognition propose that more interactive experimental protocols are crucial for understanding cognitive and social mechanisms elicited by social interaction[29,30,31,32,33] In line with this approach, we used a novel method of involving an embodied humanoid robot in an online interactive experimental manipulation. Using humanoid robots to examine human social cognition allows for excellent experimental control and, at the same time, ecological validity. Eye contact with a robot increases its subjective social evaluation, attribution of intentionality and engagement (for a review see[35])
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