Abstract
Gaze behavior of humanoid robots is an efficient mechanism for cueing our spatial orienting, but less is known about the cognitive–affective consequences of robots responding to human directional cues. Here, we examined how the extent to which a humanoid robot (iCub) avatar directed its gaze to the same objects as our participants affected engagement with the robot, subsequent gaze-cueing, and subjective ratings of the robot’s characteristic traits. In a gaze-contingent eyetracking task, participants were asked to indicate a preference for one of two objects with their gaze while an iCub avatar was presented between the object photographs. In one condition, the iCub then shifted its gaze toward the object chosen by a participant in 80% of the trials (joint condition) and in the other condition it looked at the opposite object 80% of the time (disjoint condition). Based on the literature in human–human social cognition, we took the speed with which the participants looked back at the robot as a measure of facilitated reorienting and robot-preference, and found these return saccade onset times to be quicker in the joint condition than in the disjoint condition. As indicated by results from a subsequent gaze-cueing tasks, the gaze-following behavior of the robot had little effect on how our participants responded to gaze cues. Nevertheless, subjective reports suggested that our participants preferred the iCub following participants’ gaze to the one with a disjoint attention behavior, rated it as more human-like and as more likeable. Taken together, our findings show a preference for robots who follow our gaze. Importantly, such subtle differences in gaze behavior are sufficient to influence our perception of humanoid agents, which clearly provides hints about the design of behavioral characteristics of humanoid robots in more naturalistic settings.
Highlights
Robotic agents are increasingly advanced from a technological perspective, which provides an excellent opportunity to apply methods and techniques from social cognition research to examine the aspects of social interaction between humans and robots (Wykowska et al, 2016; Wiese et al, 2017) – an important research question to be asked when facing the new era of social robots soon inhabiting human environments
We examine whether patterns of gaze-directed dyadic human–robot interactions match those we typically see in social attention toward human faces, whether they have consequences for subsequent engagement in joint attention, and whether they affect how these robots are perceived
This study examined the implicit and self-reported effects of successful versus unsuccessful initiation of joint attention with a robot avatar
Summary
Robotic agents are increasingly advanced from a technological perspective, which provides an excellent opportunity to apply methods and techniques from social cognition research to examine the aspects of social interaction between humans and robots (Wykowska et al, 2016; Wiese et al, 2017) – an important research question to be asked when facing the new era of social robots soon inhabiting human environments. Engagement with Robots that Follow Gaze us closer to understanding the conditions under which robots are perceived as animate agents. We examine whether patterns of gaze-directed dyadic human–robot interactions match those we typically see in social attention toward human faces, whether they have consequences for subsequent engagement in joint attention, and whether they affect how these robots are perceived. Paradigms with manipulations of gaze directions of a face on the screen have been described to underpin the mechanisms of following – or responding to – gaze, as well as initiating joint attention with gaze (Frischen et al, 2007; Mundy and Newell, 2007; Bayliss et al, 2013). One prominent method to investigate responding to gaze is the gaze-cueing task (Friesen and Kingstone, 1998; Driver et al, 1999), a modified version of the Posner (1980) cueing paradigm
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