title: Infant discrimination of humanoid robots.
abstract: Recently, extremely humanlike robots called "androids" have been developed, some of which are already being used in the field of entertainment. In the context of psychological studies, androids are expected to be used in the future as fully controllable human stimuli to investigate human nature. In this study, we used an android to examine infant discrimination ability between human beings and non-human agents. Participants (N = 42 infants) were assigned to three groups based on their age, i.e., 6- to 8-month-olds, 9- to 11-month-olds, and 12- to 14-month-olds, and took part in a preferential looking paradigm. Of three types of agents involved in the paradigm-a human, an android modeled on the human, and a mechanical-looking robot made from the android-two at a time were presented side-by-side as they performed a grasping action. Infants' looking behavior was measured using an eye tracking system, and the amount of time spent focusing on each of three areas of interest (face, goal, and body) was analyzed. Results showed that all age groups predominantly looked at the robot and at the face area, and that infants aged over 9 months watched the goal area for longer than the body area. There was no difference in looking times and areas focused on between the human and the android. These findings suggest that 6- to 14-month-olds are unable to discriminate between the human and the android, although they can distinguish the mechanical robot from the human.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Education and General Medicine, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine Kyoto, Japan ; Department of General Systems Studies, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Goh
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Matsuda
authors.affiliation: Department of Systems Innovation, Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University Osaka, Japan ; Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratories, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International Kyoto, Japan.
authors.forename: Hiroshi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ishiguro
authors.affiliation: Department of General Systems Studies, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo Tokyo, Japan ; CREST - Japan Science and Technology Agency Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Kazuo
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Hiraki
keywords: android; eye tracking; humanoid robot; infant; preferential looking paradigm; uncanny valley