Human- or Object-like? Cognitive Anthropomorphism of Humanoid Robots

Overview

Journal PLoS One

Specialties General Medicine
Science

Date 2022 Jul 26

PMID 35881625

Authors

Alessandra Sacino

Francesca Cocchella

Giulia De Vita

Fabrizio Bracco

Francesco Rea

Alessandra Sciutti

Luca Andrighetto

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Across three experiments (N = 302), we explored whether people cognitively elaborate humanoid robots as human- or object-like. In doing so, we relied on the inversion paradigm, which is an experimental procedure extensively used by cognitive research to investigate the elaboration of social (vs. non-social) stimuli. Overall, mixed-model analyses revealed that full-bodies of humanoid robots were subjected to the inversion effect (body-inversion effect) and, thus, followed a configural processing similar to that activated for human beings. Such a pattern of finding emerged regardless of the similarity of the considered humanoid robots to human beings. That is, it occurred when considering bodies of humanoid robots with medium (Experiment 1), high and low (Experiment 2) levels of human likeness. Instead, Experiment 3 revealed that only faces of humanoid robots with high (vs. low) levels of human likeness were subjected to the inversion effects and, thus, cognitively anthropomorphized. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings for robotic and psychological research are discussed.

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