Do People Spontaneously Take a Robot's Visual Perspective?

Abstract

This study takes a novel approach to the topic of perspective taking in HRI. In a human behavioral experiment, we examined whether and in what circumstances people spontaneously take a humanoid robot's visual perspective. We found that specific nonverbal behaviors displayed by a robot-namely, referential gaze and goal-directed reaching-led human viewers to take the robot's visual perspective, though marginally less frequently than when they encounter the same behaviors displayed by another human. This project identifies specific features of robot behavior that trigger spontaneous social-cognitive processes in human viewers and informs the design of interactive robots in the future.

Linguistic Redundancy and its Effects on Younger and Older Adults’ Real‐Time Comprehension and Memory

“…Importantly, these outcomes suggest that both younger and older adults expect the robot to follow human-like pragmatic conventions and to possess human-like perceptual and cognitive abilities. This is in line with previous findings showing that people are likely to ascribe human attributes to a robot possessing human-like characteristics and behavior (Krach et al, 2008;Thellman, Silvervarg, & Ziemke, 2020;Zhao, Cusimano, & Malle, 2016). However, the finding is in contrast with studies that show older adults are more likely to ascribe human characteristics to a robot partner than younger adults (Alimardani & Qurashi, 2019;Kont & Alimardani, 2020;Pak, Crumley-Branyon, Visser, & Rovira, 2020).…”

Human but not robotic gaze facilitates action prediction

“…Participants observed an agent appearing behind a table and gazing toward different directions (participants’ left, right, up or down) and objects (experiments 1, 2, 3 and 4: graspable objects, and a text bubble; for experiments 5 and 6: a microphone; see Apparatus and Task and Video S1 for further details). This setup allowed to present multiple gaze behaviors and resembles typical visual perspective-taking tasks ( Furlanetto et al., 2013 ; Zhao et al, 2015 ; Quesque et al, 2018 ). Moreover, by changing task demands, we were able to test whether focusing participants’ attention to low-level features of the observed gaze or reflecting upon the hidden states of the agent yields different results.…”

“…Previous studies have shown that observing an agent gazing toward an object facilitates taking that agent’s perspective ( Furlanetto et al., 2013 ; Ward et al., 2019 ; but see Quesque et al., 2018 , for a general tendency to take a decentered perspective). Similarly, observing robots gazing toward objects increases the degree to which people take their perspective but always to a lesser extent than humans ( Zhao et al, 2015 ; Zhao and Malle, 2022 ). Furthermore, observing others gazing toward a graspable object recruits brain regions typically active during the execution and observation of actions toward that object ( Pierno et al., 2006 ).…”

We Do Not Anthropomorphize a Robot Based Only on Its Cover: Context Matters too!

“…Furthermore, in human interactions, observing another individual performing goaldirected actions (such as gaze orientation or grasping an object) increases a person's tendency to adopt another individual's physical perspective [32]. The authors speculate that, similarly, observing a robot's actions may reinforce the tendency of individuals to adopt its perspective.…”

“…The robot's nonverbal social behavior (e.g., looking in the direction of the interlocutor it is addressing, toward a target object, or reaching out toward that object) also modulates individuals' adoption of its perspective. The robot's point of view is taken into account more when the robot (NAO and BAXTER) is looking at the object than when it is looking to the side [26,32]. Individuals take little account of the perspective of an iconic (yet moderately human-like) robot when it does not show social behavior.…”