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Cultural Difference in Back-Imitation’s Effect on the Perception of Robot’s Imitative Performance

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Cultural Robotics (CR 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 9549))

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Abstract

Cultural differences have been documented in different aspects of perception of robots as well as understanding of their behavior. A different line of research in developmental psychology has established a major role for imitation in skill transfer and emergence of culture. This study is a preliminary cross–cultural exploration of the effect of imitating the robot (back imitation) on human’s perception of robot’s imitative skill. In previous research, we have shown that engagement in back imitation with a NAO humanoid robot, results in increased perception of robot’s imitative skill, human–likeness of motion, and willingness of future interaction with the robot. This previous work mostly used Japanese university students. In this paper, we report the results of conducting the same study with subjects of two cultures: Japanese and Egyptian university students. The first finding of the study is that the two cultures have widely different expectations of the robot and interaction with it and that some of these differences are significantly reduced after the interaction. The second finding is that Japanese students tended to attribute higher imitation skill and human likeness to the robot they imitated while Egyptian students did not show such tendency. The paper discusses these findings in light of known differences between the two cultures and analyzes the role of expectation in the differences found.

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Acknowledgments

This study has been partially supported by JSPS Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Postdoctoral Fellows P12046, JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 24240023 and 15K12098, the Center of Innovation Program from JST, and AFOSR/AOARD Grant No. FA2386-14-1-0005

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Assiut University, Asyut, Egypt

    Yasser Mohammad

  2. Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Toyoaki Nishida

Authors
  1. Yasser Mohammad
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  2. Toyoaki Nishida
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yasser Mohammad .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Creative Robotics Lab UNSW Art & Design , Paddington, Australia

    Jeffrey T.K.V. Koh

  2. Creative Robotics Lab , Paddington, New South Wales, Australia

    Belinda J. Dunstan

  3. Creative Robotics Lab , Paddington, Australia

    David Silvera-Tawil

  4. Creative Robotics Lab , Paddington, Australia

    Mari Velonaki

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Mohammad, Y., Nishida, T. (2016). Cultural Difference in Back-Imitation’s Effect on the Perception of Robot’s Imitative Performance. In: Koh, J., Dunstan, B., Silvera-Tawil, D., Velonaki, M. (eds) Cultural Robotics. CR 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9549. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42945-8_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42945-8_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-42944-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-42945-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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