Robots as Mirrors of the Human Mind

Abstract

Robots are currently the center of attention in various fields of research because of their potential use as assistants for daily living. In this article, I highlight a different role that robots can play—being a tool for understanding human cognition. I provide examples in which robots have been used in experimental psychology to study sociocognitive mechanisms such as joint attention and sense of agency. I also discuss the issue of whether and when robots (especially those that resemble humans) are perceived through a human-centered lens with anthropomorphic attributions. In the final section, I describe approaches in which the robots’ embodiment has been used for the implementation of computational models of human cognition. In sum, the collection of studies presented here shows that robots can be an extremely useful tool for scientific inquiry in the areas of experimental psychology and cognitive science.

To follow or not to follow your gaze: The interplay between strategic control and the eye contact effect on gaze-induced attention orienting.

“…This line of research is part of the project: “Intentional Stance for Social attunement (INSTANCE, https://www.instanceproject.eu/),” funded by the European Research Council. The project investigates mechanisms of social cognition by means of using humanoid robots as sophisticated “stimuli” providing more ecological validity than 2D stimuli presented on a screen (for a similar line of argumentation, see Wiese et al, 2017; Wykowska, 2021). The experiments presented here extend our previous studies by addressing a new question of interest, namely what is the relationship between modulatory activity of social signals (i.e., eye contact) and strategic cognitive control in gaze cuing.…”

Domain-specific and domain-general neural network engagement during human-robot interactions

“…This approach pushes further than the focus on individual regions or few domain-specific networks involved in social cognitive processes often used in the literature Wiese et al, 2017;Wykowska, 2021). Using this network approach, we replicate and extend the original study by Rauchbauer and colleagues (2019).…”

“…Together activity in these networks influence the quality and outcome of an interaction (Feng et al, 2021;Redcay & Schilbach, 2019), for example level of affiliation and degree of trust. In recent years, studies have begun to ask if these networks extent to other social agents and support engagement with robots Wykowska, 2021). While most studies so far have been focussing on activity during the perception of robots in a small number of regions mostly within the social domain, a careful assessment of the functional architecture during real interactions with robots is warranted.…”

The mediating role of anthropomorphism in adopting the intentional stance towards humanoid robots

“…In addition, as Hofstede posited a dimension named "indulgence", which addressed the extent to which a society values leisure time, moral discipline, happiness, and well-being (Enkh-Amgalan, 2016). Khans and Cox reported that indulgent cultures tend 2 We administered and analyzed also the other subscales to control for covariance. This is a provisional file, not the final typeset article to create new technology as a way to improve life, to value the expression of emotions and freedom of speech.…”

“…As humans become exposed to robot presence, it is crucial to examine how robots are represented in the human mind, and how robot actions are perceived and interpreted. (for a review see Wykowska, 2021). Previous studies have shown that people differ in the degree of anthropomorphism [3], [4] and in the likelihood of attributing intentionality to robot actions (Marchesi et al, 2019;Bossi et al, 2020, Hegel et al, 2008Thellman & Ziemke, 2020).…”