Abstract
Sometimes we regard just an artifact as a lifelike one and other times not; it is considered to depend on how we deal and interact with the artifact. We experimentally examined whether differences in the manner of interacting with a moving robot (operating it or only observing its movements) influenced one’s perception of the robot’s animacy and, if so, whether the strength of this influence depended on the apparent goal-directedness of the robot’s movements. We found that people only observing the robot perceived it most animated when its movements seemed most goal-directed but that people controlling the robot perceived it more animated when 1/f noise made its movements seem less goal-directed. Our perception of a moving object’s animacy thus depends on whether we interact with the object or just observe it while someone else interacts with it. This result suggests that robotics researchers should design how a robot interacts with its users, in order to elicit higher degree of animacy perception for the robot.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Michotte A (1963) The perception of causality. Basic Books, New York
Premack D (1990) The infant’s theory of self-propelled objects. Cognition 36:1–16
Baron-Cohen S (1995) Mindblindness. MIT Press, Cambridge
Heider F, Simmel M (1944) An experimental study of apparent behavior. Am J Psychol 57:243–249
Tremoulet PD, Feldman J (2000) The influence of spatial context and the role of intentionality in the interpretation of animacy from motion. Perception 68:1047–1058
Tremoulet PD, Feldman J (2006) The influence of spatial context and the role of intentionality in the interpretation of animacy from motion. Percept Psychophys 68:1047–1058
Dittrich W, Les S (1994) Visual perception of intentional motions. Perception 23:253–268
Poulin-Doubois D, Lepage A, Ferland D (1996) Infants concept of animacy. Cogn Dev 11:19–36
Legerstee M (2000) Precursors to the development of intention at 6 months: understanding people and their actions. Dev Psychol 36:627–634
Arita A, Hiraki K, Kanda K, Ishiguro H (2005) Can we talk to robots? Ten-month-old infants expected interactive humanoid robots to be talked to by persons. Cognition 95:B49–B57
Bartneck C, Kulic D, Croft E, Zoghbi S (2009) Measurement instruments for the anthropomorphism, animacy, likeability, perceived intelligence, and perceived safety of robots. Int J Soc Robot 1:71–81
Lee KM, Park NH, Song H (2005) Can a robot be perceived as a developing creature? Hum Commun Res 31:538–563
Bartneck C, Kanda T, Mubbin O, Mahmud A (2009) Does the design of a robot influence its animacy and perceived intelligence? Int J Soc Robot 1:195–204
Okita SY, Schwartz DL (2006) Young children’s understanding of animacy and entertainment robots. Int J Hum Robot 3:393–412
Kozima H, Michalowski MP, Nakagawa C (2009) Keepon: a playful robot for research, therapy, and entertainment. Int J Soc Robot 1:3–18
Shaw-Garlock G (2009) Looking forward to sociable robots. Int J Soc Robot 1:249–260
Wagenmakers EJ, Farrell S, Ratcliff R (2005) Human cognition and a pile of sand: a discussion on serial correlations and self-organized criticality. J Exp Psychol Gen 134:108–116
Gilden DL (2001) Cognitive emissions of 1/f noise. Psychol Rev 108:33–56
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (2006) e-puck educational robot. www.e-puck.org
Opfer JE (2002) Identifying living and sentient kinds from dynamic information: the case of goal-directed versus aimless autonomous movement in conceptual change. Cognition 86:97–122
Richards DD, Siegler RS (1986) Children’s understandings of the attributes of life. J Exp Child Psychol 42:1–22
Braitenberg V (1984) Vehicles: experiments in synthetic psychology. MIT Press, Cambridge
Wheatley T, Milleville SG, Martin A (2007) Understanding animate agent: distinct roles for the social network and mirror system. Psychol Sci 18:469–474
Keysers C, Perrett DI (2004) Demystifying social cognition: a Hebbian perspective. Trends Cogn Sci 8:501–507
Schultz J, Friston KJ, O’Doherty J, Wolpert DM, Frith CD (2005) Activation in posterior superior temporal sulcus parallels parameter inducing the percept of animacy. Neuron 45:625–635
Schultz J, Imamizu H, Kawato M, Frith CD (2004) Activation of the human superior temporal gyrus during observation of goal attribution by intentional objects. J Cogn Neurosci 16:1695–1705
Blakemore SJ, Boyer P, Pachot-Clouard M, Meltzoff A, Segebarth C, Decety J (2003) The detection of contingency and animacy from simple animations in the human brain. Cereb Cortex 13: 837–844
Adolphs R (2003) Cognitive neuroscience of human social behaviour. Nat Rev Neurosci 1:4165–4178
Rizzolatti G, Craighero L (2004) The mirror-neuron system. Annu Rev Neurosci 27:169–192
Carr L, Iacoboni M, Dubeau M-C, Mazziotta JC, Lenzi GL (2003) Neural mechanisms of empathy in humans: a relay from neural systems for imitation to limbic areas. Proc Natl Acad Sci, USA 100:5497–5502
Gallese V, Goldman A (1998) Mirror neurons and simulation theory of mind-reading. Trends Cogn Sci 2:493–501
Johnson S, Booth A, O’Heam K (2001) Inferring the goals of nonhuman agent. Cogn Dev 16:637–656
Miyashita T, Ishiguro H (2004) Human-like natural behavior generation based on involuntary motions for humanoid robots. Robot Auton Syst 48:203–212
Moss F, Wiesenfeld K (1995) The benefits of background noise. Sci Am 273:50–53
Nozaki D, Mar D, Grigg P, Collins JJ (1999) Effect of colored noise on stochastic resonance in sensory neurons. Phys Rev Lett 82:2402–2405
Kiss LB, Gingl Z, Marton Z, Kertesz J, Moss F, Schmera G, Bulsara A (1993) 1/f noise in systems showing stochastic resonance. J Stat Phys 70:451–462
Ishiguro I (2005) Android science: toward a new cross-interdisciplinary framework. Proc Cogsci2005, workshop, pp 1–6
Mori M (1970) Bukimi no tani (uncanny valley). Energy 7:33–35
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Fukuda, H., Ueda, K. Interaction with a Moving Object Affects One’s Perception of Its Animacy. Int J of Soc Robotics 2, 187–193 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-010-0045-z
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-010-0045-z