Anthropomorphic or non-anthropomorphic? Effects of biological sex in observation of actions in a digital human model and a gantry robot model

Abstract

Robots are ever more relevant for everyday life, such as healthcare or rehabilitation, as well as for modern industrial environment. One important issue in this context is the way we perceive robots and their actions. From our previous study, evidence exists that sex can affect the way people perceive certain robot's actions. In our fMRI study, we analyzed brain activations of female and male participants, while they observed anthropomorphic and robotic movements performed by a human or a robot model. While lying in the scanner, participants rated the perceived level of anthropomorphic and robotic likeness of movements in the two models. The observation of the human model and the anthropomorphic movements similarly activated the biological motion coding areas in posterior temporal and parietal areas. The observation of the robot model activated predominantly areas of the ventral stream, whereas the observation of robotic movements activated predominantly the primary and higher order motor areas. To note, this later activation originated mainly from female participants, whereas male participants activated, in both robot model and robotic movements contrasts, areas in the posterior parietal cortex. Accordingly, the general contrast of sex suggests that men tend to use the ventro-dorsal stream most plausibly to rely on available previous knowledge to analyze the movements, whereas female participants use the dorso-dorsal and the ventral streams to analyze online the differences between the movement types and between the different models. The study is a first step toward the understanding of sex differences in the processing of anthropomorphic and robotic movements.

Perception of robotic actions and the influence of gender

“…They presented to the subjects video clips with the four different types of movements (robot model—anthropomorphic vs. robotic movements; human model—anthropomorphic vs. robotic movements) in an MRI environment and investigated the underlying brain activity related to the observation of the different movements. Abel et al (2022) were able to show that males and females use different processing pathways in the brain when processing the perception of robotic and anthropomorphic movements. Females showed activations of the left hemispheric primary and secondary visual areas while observing the robot model.…”

“…Furthermore, in the field of human-robot interaction, there is a large debate on the role of sex differences in operators on the perception of robots. It is reported that females generally show more positive attitudes toward anthropomorphic robots ( Lee, 2008 ; Abel et al, 2020 , 2022 ). Males, on the other hand, have more positive attitudes toward classical robots ( Cameron et al, 2018 ).…”

“…To date, there has been little investigation of neuroanatomical differences between males and females in human-robot interaction. A further study by Abel et al, 2022 investigated the neuroanatomical correlates in perception of robotic and anthropomorphic movements between biological males and females. In an fMRI experiment, they again investigated the perception of robotic and anthropomorphic movements performed by a robotic model and a digital human model.…”

“…The two substreams of the dorsal stream of processing of the visuomotor information have distinct characteristics: the dorso-dorsal stream is processing online information and has a small working memory capacity, whereas the ventro-dorsal stream has much more working memory capacity and is using previous knowledge about actions in the action processing. The results of Abel et al (2020) allow the following conclusions to be drawn ( Abel et al, 2022 ): Females analyse different movements “online” via the dorso-dorsal stream, whereas males process these movements via the ventro-dorsal stream and use more working memory capacity and rely on their prior knowledge when analyzing movements. They seem to have a higher sensitivity to differences between robotic and anthropomorphic movements and employ their expert MNS for perception of robotic movements using their previous experiences in such situations.…”