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Do We Adopt the Intentional Stance Toward Humanoid Robots?

ABSTRACT: In daily social interactions, we need to be able to navigate efficiently through our social environment. According to Dennett (1971), explaining and predicting others' behavior 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 toward 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 behavior 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 toward 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 toward artificial agents, at least in some contexts.

SUBMITTER: Marchesi S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6428708 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Do We Adopt the Intentional Stance Toward Humanoid Robots?

Marchesi Serena S Ghiglino Davide D Ciardo Francesca F Perez-Osorio Jairo J Baykara Ebru E Wykowska Agnieszka A

Frontiers in psychology 20190315

In daily social interactions, we need to be able to navigate efficiently through our social environment. According to Dennett (1971), explaining and predicting others' behavior with reference to mental states (adopting the <i>intentional stance</i>) allows efficient social interaction. Today we also routinely interact with artificial agents: from Apple's <i>Siri</i> to GPS navigation systems. In the near future, we might start casually interacting with robots. This paper addresses the question o ...[more]

PMID: 30930808

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Project description:IntroductionSocial skills training (SST) is used to help individuals with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) better understand the perspectives of others and social interactions, develop empathy skills, and learn how to engage with others socially. However, many individuals with ASC cannot easily sustain high motivation and concentration during such an intervention when it is administered by humans. We developed a social skills training program using multiple humanoid robots (STUH), including an android robot, that aimed to enable individuals with ASC to become familiar with the perspectives of others and improve their sociability and empathy skills. The objective of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of STUH for these individuals.MethodsIn STUH, we prepared 50 social exercises that consisted of conversations and behavioral interactions between an android robot and a simple humanoid robot. We prepared another humanoid robot that featured a cartoon-like and mechanical design, which played the role of host. In the first half-session of STUH, participants worked on the exercise from the perspective of an outsider. In the second half-session of STUH, they simulated experience by using robots as their avatars. The intervention associated with STUH was conducted for five days in total. We conducted an analysis of variance (ANOVA) featuring the intervention time point as the independent variable to examine changes in each score on the sociability index items.ResultsIn total, 14 individuals with ASC participated in the study. The results of multiple comparison tests using the Bonferroni method indicated that all sociability index items improved between preintervention and follow-up. Our program enabled the participants to become familiar with the perspectives of others and improve their sociability.DiscussionGiven the promising results of this study, future studies featuring long-term follow-up should be conducted to draw definitive conclusions about the efficacy of our training system.

Dataset Information

Do We Adopt the Intentional Stance Toward Humanoid Robots?

Publications

Do We Adopt the Intentional Stance Toward Humanoid Robots?

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