Perceived robot personality affects social attention in real-time human-robot interaction

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Perceived robot personality affects social attention in real-time human-robot interaction Ali Momen1* and Eva Wiese1* 1 George Mason University, United States SUMMARY. Robots as social companions becomes more and more a reality, but a big challenge is still how to design social robots that adapt to the cognitive and social needs of their human counterparts. Psychological research has worked to address these issues by examining the impact of social robots evoking non-verbal cues, like facial expressions or gaze direction. Overall, robots displaying human-like social behaviors are more accepted and lead to better performance in human-robot interactions (see Wiese, Metta, & Wykowska, 2017; for a review). Displaying meaningful gaze signals, for instance, not only seems to make social robots more likable (Willemse, Marchesi, & Wykowska, 2018) but also facilitates human-robot interaction by guiding the partner’s attention to relevant objects / events in the environment in order to establish joint attention (Admoni & Scassellati, 2012). How we react to gaze signals is determined by how much social relevance we ascribe to them and to what degree they are believed to be based on internal states like intentions or emotions (see Wiese et al., 2017). For instance, changes in gaze direction elicit stronger attentional orienting (i.e., gaze-cueing effect; Frischen, Bayliss, & Tipper, 2007), when they are accompanied by fearful rather than neutral expressions (Graham, Friesen, Fichtenholtz, & LaBar, 2010), or when they are believed to be intentional rather than pre-programmed (Wiese, Wykowska, Zwickel, & Müller, 2012). While gaze cueing has been examined quite extensively in human-human interaction studies (laboratory and real-life), studies on gaze cueing in human-robot interaction are still rare and focused on highly controlled laboratory settings (Abubshait & Wiese, 2017; Wiese et al., 2012). The few studies that have used ecologically valid real-time interaction scenarios have either looked at gaze cueing but not manipulated the social relevance of eye gaze (Wiese, Weis & Lofaro; under review), or manipulated the social relevance of eye gaze but not looked at the effect of this manipulation on social attention mechanisms like gaze cueing (Andrist, Mutlu, & Tapus, 2015). Andrist and colleagues, for instance, used the embodied robot platform Meka to examine whether participants like Meka more and engage more in interactions with it when their personality (Introvert vs. Extravert) and Meka’s personality (Introvert vs. Extravert; manipulated via the robot’s gaze behavior) matched (i.e., extraverted vs. introverted gaze behavior displayed in robot). The results showed that extraverted participants preferred interacting with Meka when it displayed extraverted gaze behavior, while introverted participants preferring interactions with the introverted Meka. The current experiment aimed to examine whether a match between participant and robot personality (Introvert vs. Extravert) impacted the degree to which a robot’s gaze is followed. In line with Andrist and colleagues (2015), we expect an extraverted robot to induce stronger gaze-cueing effects with extraverted participants, and introverted robots to induce stronger gaze-cueing effects with introverted participants. METHODS & MATERIALS 55 undergraduate students participated in the experiment. The setup consisted of the Meka Robotics S2 head and two light bulbs that were connected and controlled via a network connection. Attentional orienting to gaze cues was measured using the gaze-cueing task, which required participants to indicate via button press on a touch pad whether the light bulb on Meka’s left or right changed its color on a trial-by-trial basis. Importantly, to examine the effect of Meka’s gaze cues on attentional orienting, the change in color was preceded by Meka either looking at the respective light bulb (i.e., valid trial) or the opposite light bulb (i.e., invalid trial). The left and right light bulbs were gazed-at with equal probability (i.e., 50% cue predictivity), and Meka (positioned centrally with respect to the participants) initiated each trial by looking at the participants (i.e., mutual gaze); see Figure 1. At the beginning of the experiment, participants gave informed consent, and then completed the Big Five Inventory (BFI; Facet, 1999), which was used to inform participants whether they were more introverted or extroverted (participants scoring lower than 3 were categorized as introverted, and those scoring 3 or higher were categorized as extraverted). Participants then read gaze-cueing instructions and were informed that the robot was programmed to have either an introverted or extraverted personality (assignments to extraverted/introverted robot condition were counterbalanced). In reality, the robot was not specifically programmed to show introverted or extraverted behaviors and behaved the same in all conditions. RESULTS & DISCUSSION. Reaction time difference scores were calculated by subtracting mean reaction times of valid from invalid trials, which provided a measure of gaze-cueing effects. Gaze- cueing effects were then subject to a 2 x 2 ANOVA with the between-subject factors Meka Personality (Introverted vs. Extraverted) and Participant Personality (Introverted vs. Extraverted). The analysis revealed a significant main effect of Meka Personality, indicating a larger gaze cueing effect when Meka was an introvert than when it was an extravert. There was no main effect of Participant Personality, indicating that gaze-cueing performance did not depend on whether participants were introverted or extraverted. Furthermore, robot and participant personalities did not significantly interact, indicating that introverted versus extraverted participants were not differentially affected by the introverted versus extroverted robot, and that matching personalities did not lead to the strongest gaze-cueing effects. The smaller gaze-cueing effect when Meka was believed to be an extravert could be due to participants trying to avoid establishing mutual eye gaze, as it may have been perceived as being intimidating (see Li, Ju, & Nass, 2015). Indeed, establishing mutual gaze with an embodied robot has been shown to be a crucial precursor to gaze cueing (Kompatsiari, Tikhanoff, Ciardo, Metta, & Wykowska, 2017). Future experiments should assess whether this was the case, and determine why stronger gaze following occurs when interacting with an introverted robot. Figure 1 References REFERENCES Abubshait, A., & Wiese, E. (2017). You Look Human, But Act Like a Machine: Agent Appearance and Behavior Modulate Different Aspects of Human–Robot Interaction. Frontiers in Psychology, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01393 Admoni, H., & Scassellati, B. (2012). Robot Gaze Is Different From Human Gaze: Evidence that robot gaze does not cue reflexive attention. In Proceedings of the “Gaze in Human-Robot Interaction” Workshop at HRI. Andrist, S., Mutlu, B., & Tapus, A. (2015). Look Like Me: Matching Robot Personality via Gaze to Increase Motivation (pp. 3603–3612). ACM Press. https://doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702592 Facet, B. F. D. (1999). BIG FIVE INVENTORY (BFI). Differences, 54, 4–45. Kompatsiari, K., Tikhanoff, V., Ciardo, F., Metta, G., & Wykowska, A. (2017). The Importance of Mutual Gaze in Human-Robot Interaction. In Social Robotics (pp. 443–452). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70022-9_44 Li, J., Ju, W., & Nass, C. (2015). Observer Perception of Dominance and Mirroring Behavior in Human-robot Relationships. Proceedings of the Tenth Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 133–140. Wiese, E., Metta, G., & Wykowska, A. (2017). Robots As Intentional Agents: Using Neuroscientific Methods to Make Robots Appear More Social. Frontiers in Psychology, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01663 Wiese, E., Weis, P. P., & Lofaro, D. M. (n.d.). Embodied Social Robots Trigger Gaze Following in Real-Time HRI. Under Review. Wiese, E., Wykowska, A., Zwickel, J., & Müller, H. J. (2012). I See What You Mean: How Attentional Selection Is Shaped by Ascribing Intentions to Others. PLOS ONE, 7(9), e45391. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0045391 Willemse, C., Marchesi, S., & Wykowska, A. (2018). Robot Faces that Follow Gaze Facilitate Attentional Engagement and Increase Their Likeability. Frontiers in Psychology, 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00070 Keywords: Human-robot interaction (HRI), gaze-cueing, Anthropomorphism, social attention, individual differences Conference: 2nd International Neuroergonomics Conference, Philadelphia, PA, United States, 27 Jun - 29 Jun, 2018. Presentation Type: Oral Presentation Topic: Neuroergonomics Citation: Momen A and Wiese E (2019). Perceived robot personality affects social attention in real-time human-robot interaction. Conference Abstract: 2nd International Neuroergonomics Conference. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2018.227.00108 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 02 Apr 2018; Published Online: 27 Sep 2019. * Correspondence: Mr. Ali Momen, George Mason University, Fairfax, United States, amomen425@gmail.com Dr. Eva Wiese, George Mason University, Fairfax, United States, ewiese@gmu.edu Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Ali Momen Eva Wiese Google Ali Momen Eva Wiese Google Scholar Ali Momen Eva Wiese PubMed Ali Momen Eva Wiese Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.