Social Cognition in Human-Robot Interaction, Italian Institute of Technology, Genova, Italy.
Robotics and Autonomous Systems Department, A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research, Singapore, Singapore.
Sci Rep. 2023 Jul 19;13(1):11689. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-38704-7.
Joint attention is a pivotal mechanism underlying human ability to interact with one another. The fundamental nature of joint attention in the context of social cognition has led researchers to develop tasks that address this mechanism and operationalize it in a laboratory setting, in the form of a gaze cueing paradigm. In the present study, we addressed the question of whether engaging in joint attention with a robot face is culture-specific. We adapted a classical gaze-cueing paradigm such that a robot avatar cued participants' gaze subsequent to either engaging participants in eye contact or not. Our critical question of interest was whether the gaze cueing effect (GCE) is stable across different cultures, especially if cognitive resources to exert top-down control are reduced. To achieve the latter, we introduced a mathematical stress task orthogonally to the gaze cueing protocol. Results showed larger GCE in the Singapore sample, relative to the Italian sample, independent of gaze type (eye contact vs. no eye contact) or amount of experienced stress, which translates to available cognitive resources. Moreover, since after each block, participants rated how engaged they felt with the robot avatar during the task, we observed that Italian participants rated as more engaging the avatar during the eye contact blocks, relative to no eye contact while Singaporean participants did not show any difference in engagement relative to the gaze. We discuss the results in terms of cultural differences in robot-induced joint attention, and engagement in eye contact, as well as the dissociation between implicit and explicit measures related to processing of gaze.
共同注意力是人类相互交流能力的关键机制。共同注意力在社会认知背景下的基本性质促使研究人员开发了一些任务，以解决这一机制，并以注视线索范式的形式在实验室环境中对其进行操作化。在本研究中，我们探讨了与机器人面孔进行共同注意力是否具有文化特异性的问题。我们改编了一个经典的注视线索范式，即机器人化身在与参与者进行眼神接触或不进行眼神接触之后引导参与者的目光。我们感兴趣的关键问题是，注视线索效应（GCE）是否在不同文化中稳定存在，特别是如果施加自上而下控制的认知资源减少的话。为了实现后者，我们在注视线索协议中引入了一个数学压力任务。结果表明，新加坡样本的 GCE 大于意大利样本，与注视类型（眼神接触与无眼神接触）或经历的压力量无关，这意味着可用的认知资源。此外，由于在每个块之后，参与者都会对他们在任务期间与机器人化身的参与程度进行评分，我们观察到意大利参与者在眼神接触块中对化身的评价更高，而在无眼神接触时则相对较低，而新加坡参与者相对于注视，在参与度方面没有表现出任何差异。我们根据机器人诱导的共同注意力和眼神接触方面的文化差异，以及与注视处理相关的内隐和外显测量之间的分离来讨论结果。
