Action co-representation and the sense of agency during a joint Simon task: Comparing human and machine co-agents.

Recent studies have suggested that individuals are not able to develop a sense of joint agency during joint actions with artificial systems. We sought to examine whether this lack of joint agency is linked to individuals' inability to co-represent the machine-generated actions. Fifteen participants observed or performed a Simon response time task either individually, or jointly with another human or a computer. Participants reported the time interval between their response (or the co-actor response) and a subsequent auditory stimulus, which served as an implicit measure of participants' sense of agency. Participants' reaction times showed a classical Simon effect when they were partnered with another human, but not when they collaborated with a computer. Furthermore, participants showed a vicarious sense of agency when co-acting with another human agent but not with a computer. This absence of vicarious sense of agency during human-computer interactions and the relation with action co-representation are discussed.

The sense of agency in human-human vs human-robot joint action.

Kinesthesis pertains to the perception of moving body parts, while the sense of agency refers to the experience of controlling one's action-effects. Based on previous work, we hypothesized that the sense of agency would decrease in joint action with a robot compared to a human partner. Pairs of participants were jointly manipulating two interconnected haptic devices enabling them to feel each other's forces. Unbeknown to participants, their partner was sometimes replaced by a robot. The sense of agency was assessed using intentional binding, which refers to a contraction of perceived time between an action and its effect for intentional actions, and participants' judgment of their contribution to joint action. Participants judged their contribution as higher when they were initiating action and when they were paired with the robot. By contrast, intentional binding occurred only with a human partner. This outcome supports the hypothesis that human-robot joint action hinders intentional binding.

The social Simon effect in the tactile sensory modality: a negative finding.

This study seeks to investigate whether users activate cognitive representations of their partner's action when they are involved in tactile collaborative tasks. The social Simon effect is a spatial stimulus-response interference induced by the mere presence of a partner in a go/nogo task. It has been extensively studied in the visual and auditory sensory modalities, but never before in the tactile modality. We compared the performances of 28 participants in three tasks: (1) a standard Simon task where participants responded to two different tactile stimuli applied to their fingertips with either their left or right foot, (2) an individual go/nogo task where participants responded to only one stimulus and (3) a social go/nogo task where they again responded to only one stimulus, but were partnered with another person who responded to the complementary stimulus. The interference effect due to spatial incongruence between the side where participants received the stimulus and the foot used to answer increased significantly in the standard Simon task compared to the social go/nogo task. Such a difference was not observed between the social and individual go/nogo tasks. Performances were nevertheless enhanced in the social go/nogo task, but irrespectively of the stimulus-response congruency. This study is the first to report a negative result for the social Simon effect in the tactile modality. Results suggest that cognitive representation of the co-actor is weaker in this modality.

Sense of agency in joint action: a critical review of we-agency.

The sense of agency refers to the experience of control over voluntary actions and their effects. There is growing interest in the notion of we-agency, whereby individual sense of agency is supplanted by a collective agentic experience. The existence of this unique agentic state would have profound implications for human responsibility, and, as such, warrants further scrutiny. In this paper, we review the concept of we-agency and examine whether evidence supports it. We argue that this concept entails multiplying hypothetical agentic states associated with joint action, thus ending up with an entangled phenomenology that appears somewhat speculative when weighted against the available evidence. In light of this, we suggest that the concept of we-agency should be abandoned in favor of a more parsimonious framework for the sense of agency in joint action.

Agency and social affordance shape visual perception.

Research on the sense of agency has shown that being the author of an action changes the way we estimate the timing and the intensity of the action-effect. Yet, there is a dearth of attempts to assess the influence of agency on perception per se. The present study used the Representational Momentum paradigm to measure participants' visual anticipation of movement while manipulating their agency. In line with previous literature emphasizing the impact of social factors on visual anticipation and on the sense of agency, we additionally investigated the modulating power of social affordances on the relationship between agency and visual anticipation. We conducted two experiments where participants viewed a virtual agent directing a handshake gesture toward a second virtual agent. In a first experiment, we addressed the role of agency on visual anticipation by comparing a condition in which participants triggered the virtual agent's gesture with a condition where the computer triggered the gesture. Results showed greater forward movement anticipation when participants triggered the gesture. The second experiment investigated how altering social interaction parameters (interindividual distance and body posture) modulated the relationship between agency and visual anticipation. The outcome contrasted with the first experiment, with participants anticipating a backward movement of the hand when the computer triggered the gesture and displaying a null anticipation when participants triggered the gesture. Those two experiments highlighted how active involvement and environmental affordance interact to shape perception and allowed us to propose an updated model of agency processing.

Modulations of one's sense of agency during human-machine interactions: A behavioural study using a full humanoid robot.

Although previous investigations reported a reduced sense of agency when individuals act with traditional machines, little is known about the mechanisms underpinning interactions with human-like automata. The aim of this study was twofold: (1) to investigate the effect of the machine's physical appearance on the individuals' sense of agency and (2) to explore the cognitive mechanisms underlying the individuals' sense of agency when they are engaged in a joint task. Twenty-eight participants performed a joint Simon task together with another human or an automated artificial system as a co-agent. The physical appearance of the automated artificial system was manipulated so that participants could cooperate either with a servomotor or a full humanoid robot during the joint task. Both participants' response times and temporal estimations of action-output delays (i.e., an implicit measure of agency) were collected. Results showed that participants' sense of agency for self- and other-generated actions sharply declined during interactions with the servomotor compared with the human-human interactions. Interestingly, participants' sense of agency for self- and other-generated actions was reinforced when participants interacted with the humanoid robot compared with the servomotor. These results are discussed further.

Change Blindness in Adolescents With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Use of Eye-Tracking.

Objective: This study investigated change detection of central or marginal interest in images using a change-blindness paradigm with eye tracking. Method: Eighty-four drug-naïve adolescents [44 with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)/40 controls with typical development] searched for a change in 36 pairs of original and modified images, with an item of central or marginal interest present or absent, presented in rapid alternation. Collected data were detection rate, response time, and gaze fixation duration, latency, and dispersion data. Results: Both groups' change-detection times were similar, with no speed-accuracy trade-off. No between-group differences were found in time to first fixation, fixation duration, or scan paths. Both groups performed better for items of central level of interest. The ADHD group demonstrated greater fixation dispersion in scan paths for central- and marginal-interest items. Conclusion: Results suggest the greater gaze dispersion may lead to greater fatigue in tasks that require longer attention duration.

A framework of evidence-based practice for digital support, co-developed with and for the autism community.

LAY ABSTRACT: Digital supports are any type of technologies that have been intentionally developed to improve daily living in some way. A wide array of digital supports (such as apps) have been developed for the autism community specifically, but there is little or no evidence of whether they work or not. This study sought to identify what types of evidence the autistic community valued and wanted to see provided to enable an informed choice to be made regarding digital supports. A consensus was developed between autistic people and their families, practitioners (such as therapists and teachers) as well as researchers, to identify the core aspects of evidence that everyone agreed were useful. In all, 27 people reached agreement on three categories for which evidence is required: reliability, engagement and the effectiveness of the technology. Consensus was also reached on four key sources of evidence for these three categories: hands-on experience, academic sources, expert views and online reviews. The resulting framework allows for any technology to be evaluated for the level of evidence identifying how effective it is. The framework can be used by autistic people, their families, practitioners and researchers to ensure that decisions concerning the provision of support for autistic people is informed by evidence, that is, 'evidence-based practice'.

How Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Spontaneously Attend to Real-World Scenes: Use of a Change Blindness Paradigm.

Visual attention of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was assessed using a change blindness paradigm. Twenty-five adolescents with ASD aged 12-18 years and 25 matched typically developing (TD) adolescents viewed 36 pairs of digitized real-world images. Each pair of images was displayed in a 'flicker paradigm' whereby a particular item alternately appeared and disappeared. This item was either a central or a marginal detail of the scene. Change detection response times were measured and compared between groups. Marginal details were more difficult to detect than central details of the scenes in both groups, however, the response times of the ASD group were lower than the TD group. These results challenge the hypothesis of superior visual detection in ASD.

Corrigendum: Predictive Mechanisms Are Not Involved the Same Way during Human-Human vs. Human-Machine Interactions: A Review.

[This corrects the article on p. 52 in vol. 11, PMID: 29081744.].

ICT and autism care: state of the art.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Over the past 10 years, the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has increased in regard to the treatment of individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). ICT support mechanisms (e.g. computers, laptops, robots) are particularly attractive and are adapted to children with ASD. In addition, ICT algorithms can offer new perspectives for clinicians, outside direct apps or gaming proposals. Here, we will focus on the use of serious games and robots because of their attractiveness and their value in working on social skills. RECENT FINDINGS: The latest knowledge regarding the use of ICT in the forms of serious games and robotics applied to individuals with ASD shows that the field of serious games has already achieved interesting and promising results, although the clinical validations are not always complete. In the field of robotics, there are still many limitations on the use of ICT (e.g. most interaction are similar to the wizard of Oz), and questions remain concerning their eventual effectiveness. SUMMARY: To describe the implications of the findings for clinical practice or research, we describe two large projects, namely, JEMImE and Michelangelo, as examples of current studies that are aimed at enhancing social skills in children with ASD by including novel algorithms with clinical insights in robots or serious games.

Children Facial Expression Production: Influence of Age, Gender, Emotion Subtype, Elicitation Condition and Culture.

The production of facial expressions (FEs) is an important skill that allows children to share and adapt emotions with their relatives and peers during social interactions. These skills are impaired in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. However, the way in which typical children develop and master their production of FEs has still not been clearly assessed. This study aimed to explore factors that could influence the production of FEs in childhood such as age, gender, emotion subtype (sadness, anger, joy, and neutral), elicitation task (on request, imitation), area of recruitment (French Riviera and Parisian) and emotion multimodality. A total of one hundred fifty-seven children aged 6-11 years were enrolled in Nice and Paris, France. We asked them to produce FEs in two different tasks: imitation with an avatar model and production on request without a model. Results from a multivariate analysis revealed that: (1) children performed better with age. (2) Positive emotions were easier to produce than negative emotions. (3) Children produced better FE on request (as opposed to imitation); and (4) Riviera children performed better than Parisian children suggesting regional influences on emotion production. We conclude that facial emotion production is a complex developmental process influenced by several factors that needs to be acknowledged in future research.

Gaze leading is associated with liking.

Gaze plays a pivotal role in human communication, especially for coordinating attention. The ability to guide the gaze orientation of others forms the backbone of joint attention. Recent research has raised the possibility that gaze following behaviors could induce liking. The present study seeks to investigate this hypothesis. We designed two physically different human avatars that could follow the gaze of users via eye-tracking technology. In a preliminary experiment, 20 participants assessed the baseline appeal of the two avatars and confirmed that the avatars differed in this respect. In the main experiment, we compared how 19 participants rated the two avatars in terms of pleasantness, trustworthiness and closeness when the avatars were following their gaze versus when the avatar generated gaze movements autonomously. Although the same avatar as in the preliminary experiment was rated more favorably, the pleasantness attributed to the two avatars increased when they followed the gaze of the participants. This outcome provides evidence that gaze following fosters liking independently of the baseline appeal of the individual.

Predictive Mechanisms Are Not Involved the Same Way during Human-Human vs. Human-Machine Interactions: A Review.

Nowadays, interactions with others do not only involve human peers but also automated systems. Many studies suggest that the motor predictive systems that are engaged during action execution are also involved during joint actions with peers and during other human generated action observation. Indeed, the comparator model hypothesis suggests that the comparison between a predicted state and an estimated real state enables motor control, and by a similar functioning, understanding and anticipating observed actions. Such a mechanism allows making predictions about an ongoing action, and is essential to action regulation, especially during joint actions with peers. Interestingly, the same comparison process has been shown to be involved in the construction of an individual's sense of agency, both for self-generated and observed other human generated actions. However, the implication of such predictive mechanisms during interactions with machines is not consensual, probably due to the high heterogeneousness of the automata used in the experimentations, from very simplistic devices to full humanoid robots. The discrepancies that are observed during human/machine interactions could arise from the absence of action/observation matching abilities when interacting with traditional low-level automata. Consistently, the difficulties to build a joint agency with this kind of machines could stem from the same problem. In this context, we aim to review the studies investigating predictive mechanisms during social interactions with humans and with automated artificial systems. We will start by presenting human data that show the involvement of predictions in action control and in the sense of agency during social interactions. Thereafter, we will confront this literature with data from the robotic field. Finally, we will address the upcoming issues in the field of robotics related to automated systems aimed at acting as collaborative agents.

A meta-analysis of the anterior cingulate contribution to social pain.

Many functional magnetic resonance imaging studies have explored the neural correlates of social pain that results from social threat, exclusion, rejection, loss or negative evaluation. Although activations have consistently been reported within the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), it remains unclear which ACC subdivision is particularly involved. To provide a quantitative estimation of the specific involvement of ACC subdivisions in social pain, we conducted a voxel-based meta-analysis. The literature search identified 46 articles that included 940 subjects, the majority of which used the cyberball task. Significant likelihoods of activation were found in both the ventral and dorsal ACC for both social pain elicitation and self-reported distress during social pain. Self-reported distress involved more specifically the subgenual and pregenual ACC than social pain-related contrasts. The cyberball task involved the anterior midcingulate cortex to a lesser extent than other experimental tasks. During social pain, children exhibited subgenual activations to a greater extent than adults. Finally, the ventro-dorsal gradient of ACC activations in cyberball studies was related to the length of exclusion phases. The present meta-analysis contributes to a better understanding of the role of ACC subdivisions in social pain, and it could be of particular importance for guiding future studies of social pain and its neural underpinnings.

An eye-tracking method to reveal the link between gazing patterns and pragmatic abilities in high functioning autism spectrum disorders.

The present study illustrates the potential advantages of an eye-tracking method for exploring the association between visual scanning of faces and inferences of mental states. Participants watched short videos involving social interactions and had to explain what they had seen. The number of cognition verbs (e.g., think, believe, know) in their answers were counted. Given the possible use of peripheral vision that could confound eye-tracking measures, we added a condition using a gaze-contingent viewing window: the entire visual display is blurred, expect for an area that moves with the participant's gaze. Eleven typical adults and eleven high functioning adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) were recruited. The condition employing the viewing window yielded strong correlations between the average duration of fixations, the ratio of cognition verbs and standard measures of social disabilities.

Innovative technology-based interventions for autism spectrum disorders: a meta-analysis.

This article reports the results of a meta-analysis of technology-based intervention studies for children with autism spectrum disorders. We conducted a systematic review of research that used a pre-post design to assess innovative technology interventions, including computer programs, virtual reality, and robotics. The selected studies provided interventions via a desktop computer, interactive DVD, shared active surface, and virtual reality. None employed robotics. The results provide evidence for the overall effectiveness of technology-based training. The overall mean effect size for posttests of controlled studies of children with autism spectrum disorders who received technology-based interventions was significantly different from zero and approached the medium magnitude, d = 0.47 (confidence interval: 0.08-0.86). The influence of age and IQ was not significant. Differences in training procedures are discussed in the light of the negative correlation that was found between the intervention durations and the studies' effect sizes. The results of this meta-analysis provide support for the continuing development, evaluation, and clinical usage of technology-based intervention for individuals with autism spectrum disorders.

Investigating social gaze as an action-perception online performance.

Gaze represents a major non-verbal communication channel in social interactions. In this respect, when facing another person, one's gaze should not be examined as a purely perceptive process but also as an action-perception online performance. However, little is known about processes involved in the real-time self-regulation of social gaze. The present study investigates the impact of a gaze-contingent viewing window on fixation patterns and the awareness of being the agent moving the window. In face-to-face scenarios played by a virtual human character, the task for the 18 adult participants was to interpret an equivocal sentence which could be disambiguated by examining the emotional expressions of the character speaking. The virtual character was embedded in naturalistic backgrounds to enhance realism. Eye-tracking data showed that the viewing window induced changes in gaze behavior, notably longer visual fixations. Notwithstanding, only half of the participants ascribed the window displacements to their eye movements. These participants also spent more time looking at the eyes and mouth regions of the virtual human character. The outcomes of the study highlight the dissociation between non-volitional gaze adaptation and the self-ascription of agency. Such dissociation provides support for a two-step account of the sense of agency composed of pre-noetic monitoring mechanisms and reflexive processes, linked by bottom-up and top-down processes. We comment upon these results, which illustrate the relevance of our method for studying online social cognition, in particular concerning autism spectrum disorders (ASD) where the poor pragmatic understanding of oral speech is considered linked to visual peculiarities that impede facial exploration.

Self-monitoring of gaze in high functioning autism.

Atypical visual behaviour has been recently proposed to account for much of social misunderstanding in autism. Using an eye-tracking system and a gaze-contingent lens display, the present study explores self-monitoring of eye motion in two conditions: free visual exploration and guided exploration via blurring the visual field except for the focal area of vision. During these conditions, thirteen students with High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders (HFASD) and fourteen typical individuals were presented naturalistic and interactive social stimuli using virtual reality. Fixation data showed a weaker modulation of eye movements according to the conditions in the HFASD group, thus suggesting impairments in self-monitoring of gaze. Moreover, the gaze-contingent lens induced a visual behaviour whereby social understanding scores were correlated with the time spent gazing at faces. The device could be useful for treating gaze monitoring deficiencies in HFASD.