title: Believing androids - fMRI activation in the right temporo-parietal junction is modulated by ascribing intentions to non-human agents.
abstract: Attributing mind to interaction partners has been shown to increase the social relevance we ascribe to others' actions and to modulate the amount of attention dedicated to them. However, it remains unclear how the relationship between higher-order mind attribution and lower-level attention processes is established in the brain. In this neuroimaging study, participants saw images of an anthropomorphic robot that moved its eyes left- or rightwards to signal the appearance of an upcoming stimulus in the same (valid cue) or opposite location (invalid cue). Independently, participants' beliefs about the intentionality underlying the observed eye movements were manipulated by describing the eye movements as under human control or preprogrammed. As expected, we observed a validity effect behaviorally and neurologically (increased response times and activation in the invalid vs. valid condition). More importantly, we observed that this effect was more pronounced for the condition in which the robot's behavior was believed to be controlled by a human, as opposed to be preprogrammed. This interaction effect between cue validity and belief was, however, only found at the neural level and was manifested as a significant increase of activation in bilateral anterior temporoparietal junction.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , Vrije Universiteit Brussels , Brussels , Belgium.
authors.forename: Ceylan
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Özdem
authors.affiliation: b Department of Psychology , George Mason University , Fairfax , VA , USA.|c Department of Psychology , Ludwig Maximilians-Universiteit , Munchen , Germany.
authors.forename: Eva
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Wiese
authors.affiliation: d Engineering Psychology, Division of Human Work Sciences , Luleå University of Technology , Luleå , Sweden.|e Chair for Cognitive Systems , Technische Universität München , Munich , Germany.
authors.forename: Agnieszka
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Wykowska
authors.affiliation: c Department of Psychology , Ludwig Maximilians-Universiteit , Munchen , Germany.
authors.forename: Hermann
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Müller
authors.affiliation: f Ghent Institute for Functional and Metabolic Imaging , University of Ghent , Ghent , Belgium.
authors.forename: Marcel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Brass
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , Vrije Universiteit Brussels , Brussels , Belgium.
authors.forename: Frank
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-2538-9847
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Van Overwalle
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D001292:Attitude to Computers; D001931:Brain Mapping; D005133:Eye Movements; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009039:Motion Perception / Q000502:physiology; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000502:physiology*; D012371:Robotics; D012938:Social Perception; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000502:physiology*; D056345:Theory of Mind / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Attentional reorientating; TPJ; intentional stance; social mentalizing