scholarly journals Reduced Sense of Agency in Human-Robot Interaction

Author(s):  
Francesca Ciardo ◽  
Davide De Tommaso ◽  
Frederike Beyer ◽  
Agnieszka Wykowska
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Ciardo ◽  
Frederike Beyer ◽  
Davide De Tommaso ◽  
Agnieszka Wykowska

In the presence of others, sense of agency (SoA), i.e. the perceived relationship between our own actions and external events, is reduced. The present study aimed at investigating whether the phenomenon of reduced SoA is observed in human-robot interaction, similarly to human-human interaction. To this end, we tested SoA when people interacted with a robot (Experiment 1), with a passive, non-agentic air pump (Experiment 2), or when they interacted with both a robot and a human being (Experiment 3). Participants were asked to rate the perceived control they felt on the outcome of their action while performing a diffusion of responsibility task. Results showed that the intentional agency attributed to the artificial entity differently affect the performance and the perceived SoA on the outcome of the task. Experiment 1 showed that, when participants successfully performed an action, they rated SoA over the outcome as lower in trials in which the robot was also able to act (but did not), compared to when they were performing the task alone. However, this did not occur in Experiment 2, where the artificial entity was an air pump, which had the same influence on the task as the robot, but in a passive manner and thus lacked intentional agency. Results of Experiment 3 showed that SoA was reduced similarly for the human and robot agents, threby indicating that attribution of intentional agency plays a crucial role in reduction of SoA. Together, our results suggest that interacting with robotic agents affects SoA, similarly to interacting with other humans, but differently from interacting with non-agentic mechanical devices. This has important implications for the applied of social robotics, where a subjective decrease in SoA could have negative consequences, such as in robot-assisted care in hospitals.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Ciardo ◽  
Davide De Tommaso ◽  
Frederike Beyer ◽  
Agnieszka Wykowska

In the presence of others, sense of agency (SoA), i.e. the perceived relation-ship between our own actions and external events, is reduced. This effect is thought to contribute to diffusion of responsibility. The present study aimed at examining humans’ SoA when interacting with an artificial embodied agent. Young adults participated in a task alongside the Cozmo robot (Anki Robotics). Participants were asked to perform costly actions (i.e. losing vari-ous amounts of points) to stop an inflating balloon from exploding. In 50% of trials, only the participant could stop the inflation of the balloon (Individ-ual condition). In the remaining trials, both Cozmo and the participant were in charge of preventing the balloon from bursting (Joint condition). The longer the players waited before pressing the “stop” key, the smaller amount of points that was subtracted. However, in case the balloon burst, partici-pants would lose the largest amount of points. In the joint condition, no points were lost if Cozmo stopped the balloon. At the end of each trial, par-ticipants rated how much control they perceived over the outcome of the tri-al. Results showed that when participants successfully stopped the balloon, they rated their SoA lower in the Joint than in the Individual condition, in-dependently of the amount of lost points. This suggests that interacting with robots affects SoA, similarly to interacting with other humans


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecilia Roselli ◽  
Francesca Ciardo ◽  
Agnieszka Wykowska

Sense of Agency (SoA) is the feeling of control over one’s actions and their consequences. In social contexts, people experience a “vicarious” SoA over other humans’ actions; however, the phenomenon disappears when the other agent is a computer. The present study aimed to investigate factors that determine when humans experience vicarious SoA in human-robot interaction (HRI). To this end, in two experiments we disentangled two potential contributing factors: (1) the possibility of representing the robot’s actions, and (2) the adoption of Intentional Stance toward robots. Participants performed an Intentional Binding (IB) task reporting the time of occurrence for self- or robot-generated actions or sensory outcomes. To assess the role of action representation, the robot either performed a physical keypress (Experiment 1) or “acted” by sending a command via Bluetooth (Experiment 2). Before the experiment, attribution of intentionality to the robot was assessed. Results showed that when participants judged the occurrence of the action, vicarious SoA was predicted by the degree of attributed intentionality, but only when the robot’s action was physical. Conversely, digital actions elicited reversed effect of vicarious IB, suggesting that disembodied actions of robots are perceived as non-intentional. When participants judged the occurrence of the sensory outcome, vicarious SoA emerged only when the causing action was physical. Notably, intentionality attribution predicted vicarious SoA for sensory outcomes independently of the nature of the causing event, physical or digital. In conclusion, both intentionality attribution and action representation play a crucial role for vicarious SoA in HRI.


2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182110420
Author(s):  
Cecilia Roselli ◽  
Francesca Ciardo ◽  
Agnieszka Wykowska

Sense of Agency (SoA) is the feeling of control over one’s actions and their consequences. In social contexts, people experience a “vicarious” SoA over other humans’ actions; however, the phenomenon disappears when the other agent is a computer. This study aimed to investigate the factors that determine when humans experience vicarious SoA in Human–Robot Interaction (HRI). To this end, in two experiments, we disentangled two potential contributing factors: (1) the possibility of representing the robot’s actions and (2) the adoption of Intentional Stance towards robots. Participants performed an Intentional Binding (IB) task reporting the time of occurrence for self- or robot-generated actions or sensory outcomes. To assess the role of action representation, the robot either performed a physical keypress (Experiment 1) or “acted” by sending a command via Bluetooth (Experiment 2). Before the experiment, attribution of intentionality to the robot was assessed. Results showed that when participants judged the occurrence of the action, vicarious SoA was predicted by the degree of attributed intentionality, but only when the robot’s action was physical. Conversely, digital actions elicited the reversed effect of vicarious IB, suggesting that disembodied actions of robots are perceived as non-intentional. When participants judged the occurrence of the sensory outcome, vicarious SoA emerged only when the causing action was physical. Notably, intentionality attribution predicted vicarious SoA for sensory outcomes independently of the nature of the causing event, physical or digital. In conclusion, both intentionality attribution and action representation play a crucial role for vicarious SoA in HRI.


2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitchell S. Dunfee ◽  
Tracy Sanders ◽  
Peter A. Hancock

Author(s):  
Rosemarie Yagoda ◽  
Michael D. Coovert

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew S. Prewett ◽  
Kristin N. Saboe ◽  
Ryan C. Johnson ◽  
Michael D. Coovert ◽  
Linda R. Elliott

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleanore Edson ◽  
Judith Lytle ◽  
Thomas McKenna

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Wykowska ◽  
Jairo Pérez-Osorio ◽  
Stefan Kopp

This booklet is a collection of the position statements accepted for the HRI’20 conference workshop “Social Cognition for HRI: Exploring the relationship between mindreading and social attunement in human-robot interaction” (Wykowska, Perez-Osorio & Kopp, 2020). Unfortunately, due to the rapid unfolding of the novel coronavirus at the beginning of the present year, the conference and consequently our workshop, were canceled. On the light of these events, we decided to put together the positions statements accepted for the workshop. The contributions collected in these pages highlight the role of attribution of mental states to artificial agents in human-robot interaction, and precisely the quality and presence of social attunement mechanisms that are known to make human interaction smooth, efficient, and robust. These papers also accentuate the importance of the multidisciplinary approach to advance the understanding of the factors and the consequences of social interactions with artificial agents.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cinzia Di Dio ◽  
Federico Manzi ◽  
Giulia Peretti ◽  
Angelo Cangelosi ◽  
Paul L. Harris ◽  
...  

Studying trust within human-robot interaction is of great importance given the social relevance of robotic agents in a variety of contexts. We investigated the acquisition, loss and restoration of trust when preschool and school-age children played with either a human or a humanoid robot in-vivo. The relationship between trust and the quality of attachment relationships, Theory of Mind, and executive function skills was also investigated. No differences were found in children’s trust in the play-partner as a function of agency (human or robot). Nevertheless, 3-years-olds showed a trend toward trusting the human more than the robot, while 7-years-olds displayed the reverse behavioral pattern, thus highlighting the developing interplay between affective and cognitive correlates of trust.


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