scholarly journals Human agency beliefs influence behaviour during virtual social interactions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Caruana ◽  
Dean Spirou ◽  
Jon Brock
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Eye Contact ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Intentional Stance ◽  
Agency Beliefs ◽  
The Impact

In recent years, with the emergence of relatively inexpensive and accessible virtual reality technologies, it is now possible to deliver compelling and realistic simulations of human-to-human interaction. Neuroimaging studies have shown that, when participants believe they are interacting via a virtual interface with another human agent, they show different patterns of brain activity compared to when they know that their virtual partner is computer-controlled. The suggestion is that users adopt an “intentional stance” by attributing mental states to their virtual partner. However, it remains unclear how beliefs in the agency of a virtual partner influence participants’ behaviour and subjective experience of the interaction. We investigated this issue in the context of a cooperative “joint attention” game in which participants interacted via an eye tracker with a virtual onscreen partner, directing each other’s eye gaze to different screen locations. Half of the participants were correctly informed that their partner was controlled by a computer algorithm (“Computer” condition). The other half were misled into believing that the virtual character was controlled by a second participant in another room (“Human” condition). Those in the “Human” condition were slower to make eye contact with their partner and more likely to try and guide their partner before they had established mutual eye contact than participants in the “Computer” condition. They also responded more rapidly when their partner was guiding them, although the same effect was also found for a control condition in which they responded to an arrow cue. Results confirm the influence of human agency beliefs on behaviour in this virtual social interaction context. They further suggest that researchers and developers attempting to simulate social interactions should consider the impact of agency beliefs on user experience in other social contexts, and their effect on the achievement of the application’s goals.

scholarly journals Human agency beliefs influence behaviour during virtual social interactions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Caruana ◽  
Dean Spirou ◽  
Jon Brock
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Eye Contact ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Intentional Stance ◽  
Agency Beliefs ◽  
The Impact

In recent years, with the emergence of relatively inexpensive and accessible virtual reality technologies, it is now possible to deliver compelling and realistic simulations of human-to-human interaction. Neuroimaging studies have shown that, when participants believe they are interacting via a virtual interface with another human agent, they show different patterns of brain activity compared to when they know that their virtual partner is computer-controlled. The suggestion is that users adopt an “intentional stance” by attributing mental states to their virtual partner. However, it remains unclear how beliefs in the agency of a virtual partner influence participants’ behaviour and subjective experience of the interaction. We investigated this issue in the context of a cooperative “joint attention” game in which participants interacted via an eye tracker with a virtual onscreen partner, directing each other’s eye gaze to different screen locations. Half of the participants were correctly informed that their partner was controlled by a computer algorithm (“Computer” condition). The other half were misled into believing that the virtual character was controlled by a second participant in another room (“Human” condition). Those in the “Human” condition were slower to make eye contact with their partner and more likely to try and guide their partner before they had established mutual eye contact than participants in the “Computer” condition. They also responded more rapidly when their partner was guiding them, although the same effect was also found for a control condition in which they responded to an arrow cue. Results confirm the influence of human agency beliefs on behaviour in this virtual social interaction context. They further suggest that researchers and developers attempting to simulate social interactions should consider the impact of agency beliefs on user experience in other social contexts, and their effect on the achievement of the application’s goals.

scholarly journals Human agency beliefs influence behaviour during virtual social interactions

PeerJ ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. e3819 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Caruana ◽  
Dean Spirou ◽  
Jon Brock
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Eye Contact ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Intentional Stance ◽  
Agency Beliefs ◽  
The Impact

In recent years, with the emergence of relatively inexpensive and accessible virtual reality technologies, it is now possible to deliver compelling and realistic simulations of human-to-human interaction. Neuroimaging studies have shown that, when participants believe they are interacting via a virtual interface with another human agent, they show different patterns of brain activity compared to when they know that their virtual partner is computer-controlled. The suggestion is that users adopt an “intentional stance” by attributing mental states to their virtual partner. However, it remains unclear how beliefs in the agency of a virtual partner influence participants’ behaviour and subjective experience of the interaction. We investigated this issue in the context of a cooperative “joint attention” game in which participants interacted via an eye tracker with a virtual onscreen partner, directing each other’s eye gaze to different screen locations. Half of the participants were correctly informed that their partner was controlled by a computer algorithm (“Computer” condition). The other half were misled into believing that the virtual character was controlled by a second participant in another room (“Human” condition). Those in the “Human” condition were slower to make eye contact with their partner and more likely to try and guide their partner before they had established mutual eye contact than participants in the “Computer” condition. They also responded more rapidly when their partner was guiding them, although the same effect was also found for a control condition in which they responded to an arrow cue. Results confirm the influence of human agency beliefs on behaviour in this virtual social interaction context. They further suggest that researchers and developers attempting to simulate social interactions should consider the impact of agency beliefs on user experience in other social contexts, and their effect on the achievement of the application’s goals.

scholarly journals Making sense of human interaction benefits from communicative cues

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitrios Kourtis ◽  
Pierre Jacob ◽  
Natalie Sebanz ◽  
Dan Sperber ◽  
Günther Knoblich
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Cognitive Process ◽  
Eye Contact ◽  
Attentional Focus ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Pointing Gestures ◽  
Stage Process ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Pointing Gesture

Abstract We investigated whether communicative cues help observers to make sense of human interaction. We recorded EEG from an observer monitoring two individuals who were occasionally communicating with each other via either mutual eye contact and/or pointing gestures, and then jointly attending to the same object or attending to different objects that were placed on a table in front of them. The analyses were focussed on the processing of the interaction outcome (i.e. presence or absence of joint attention) and showed that its interpretation is a two-stage process, as reflected in the N300 and the N400 potentials. The N300 amplitude was reduced when the two individuals shared their focus of attention, which indicates the operation of a cognitive process that involves the relatively fast identification and evaluation of actor–object relationships. On the other hand, the N400 was insensitive to the sharing or distribution of the two individuals’ attentional focus. Interestingly, the N400 was reduced when the interaction outcome was preceded either by mutual eye contact or by a perceived pointing gesture. This shows that observation of communication “opens up” the mind to a wider range of action possibilities and thereby helps to interpret unusual outcomes of social interactions.

scholarly journals Do we adopt the Intentional Stance towards humanoid robots?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serena Marchesi ◽  
Davide Ghiglino ◽  
Francesca Ciardo ◽  
Jairo Pérez-Osorio ◽  
Ebru Baykara ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Humanoid Robot ◽  
Humanoid Robots ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Intentional Stance ◽  
Artificial Agents ◽  
Navigation Systems ◽  
Artificial Agent ◽  
Gps Navigation ◽  
Near Future

In daily social interactions, we need to be able to navigate efficiently through our social environment. According to Dennett (1971), explaining and predicting others’ behaviour with reference to mental states (adopting the intentional stance) allows efficient social interaction. Today we also routinely interact with artificial agents: from Apple’s Siri to GPS navigation systems. In the near future, we might start casually interacting with robots. This paper addresses the question of whether adopting the intentional stance can also occur with respect to artificial agents. We propose a new tool to explore if people adopt the intentional stance towards an artificial agent (humanoid robot). The tool consists in a questionnaire that probes participants’ stance by requiring them to choose the likelihood of an explanation (mentalistic vs. mechanistic) of a behaviour of a robot iCub depicted in a naturalistic scenario (a sequence of photographs). The results of the first study conducted with this questionnaire showed that although the explanations were somewhat biased towards the mechanistic stance, a substantial number of mentalistic explanations were also given. This suggests that it is possible to induce adoption of the intentional stance towards artificial agents, at least in some contexts.

scholarly journals Don’t overthink: fast decision making combined with behavior variability perceived as more human-like

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serena Marchesi ◽  
Jairo Pérez-Osorio ◽  
Davide De Tommaso ◽  
Agnieszka Wykowska
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Intentional Stance ◽  
Artificial Agents ◽  
Type Of Behavior ◽  
Fast Decision

Understanding the human cognitive processes involved in the interaction with artificial agents is crucial for designing socially capable robots. During social interactions, humans tend to explain and predict others’ behavior adopting the intentional stance, that is, assuming that mental states drive behavior. However, the question of whether humans would adopt the same strategy with artificial agents remains unanswered. The present study aimed at identifying whether the type of behavior exhibited by the robot has an impact on the attribution of mentalistic explanations of behavior. We employed the Instance Questionnaire (ISQ) pre and post-observation of two types of behavior (decisive or hesitant). We found that decisive behavior, with rare and unexpected “hesitant” behaviors lead to more mentalistic attributions relative to behavior that was primarily hesitant. Findings suggest that higher expectations regarding the robots’ capabilities and the characteristics of the behavior might lead to more mentalistic descriptions.

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