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Implications of Robot Actions for Human Perception. How Do We Represent Actions of the Observed Robots?

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Abstract

Social robotics aims at developing robots that are to assist humans in their daily lives. To achieve this aim, robots must act in a comprehensible and intuitive manner for humans. That is, humans should be able to cognitively represent robot actions easily, in terms of action goals and means to achieve them. This yields a question of how actions are represented in general. Based on ideomotor theories (Greenwald Psychol Rev 77:73–99, 1970) and accounts postulating common code between action and perception (Hommel et al. Behav Brain Sci 24:849–878, 2001) as well as empirical evidence (Wykowska et al. J Exp Psychol 35:1755–1769, 2009), we argue that action and perception domains are tightly linked in the human brain. The aim of the present study was to examine if robot actions would be represented similarly, and in consequence, elicit similar perceptual effects, as representing human actions. Our results showed that indeed robot actions elicited perceptual effects of the same kind as human actions, arguing in favor of that humans are capable of representing robot actions in a similar manner as human actions. Future research will aim at examining how much these representations depend on physical properties of the robot actor and its behavior.

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Notes

  1. Note that when the two left-handed participants were excluded from analysis, the pattern of results remained the same, with significant interaction of movement type and task type, F(1,13)\(\,=\,\)7.34, \(p = 0.018\), \(\eta _\mathrm{p}^{2} = 0.361\); with faster RTs in the size taks for grasping (M\(\,=\,\)376 ms), relative to pointing (M\(\,=\,\)381 ms), t(13)\(\,=\,\)1.91, \(p = 0.039\), one-tailed; and faster RTs in the luminance task for pointing (M\(\,=\,\)380 ms) relative to grasping (M\(\,=\,\)386 ms), t(13)\(\,=\,\)1.92, \(p = 0.035\), one-tailed. The interaction with type of cue (human vs. robot) was not significant, F(1,13)\(\,=\,\)0.17, \(p = 0.68\), indicating that the congruency effects were similar for both human and robot cartoon hands. Thus, even though two participants were naturally left-handed; their data did not affect the pattern of results.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) grant awarded to AW (WY-122/1-1).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. General and Experimental Psychology Unit, Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Leopoldstr. 13, 80802 , Munich, Germany

    Agnieszka Wykowska, Md. Mamun Al-Amin & Hermann J. Müller

  2. Institute for Cognitive Systems, Technische Universität München, Karlstr. 45/II, 80333 , Munich, Germany

    Agnieszka Wykowska

  3. Pattern Analysis and Computer Vision, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia-PAVIS, Via Morego, 30, 16165 , Genova, Italy

    Ryad Chellali

  4. Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, North South University, Plot-15, Block-B, Bashundhara, Dhaka , 1229, Bangladesh

    Md. Mamun Al-Amin

  5. Birkbeck College, University of London, Malet Street, Bloomsbury, London, WC1E 7HX, UK

    Hermann J. Müller

Authors
  1. Agnieszka Wykowska
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  2. Ryad Chellali
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  3. Md. Mamun Al-Amin
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  4. Hermann J. Müller
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Correspondence to Agnieszka Wykowska.

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Wykowska, A., Chellali, R., Al-Amin, M.M. et al. Implications of Robot Actions for Human Perception. How Do We Represent Actions of the Observed Robots?. Int J of Soc Robotics 6, 357–366 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-014-0239-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-014-0239-x

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