Anthropomorphism-based causal and responsibility attributions to robots.

People tend to expect mental capabilities in a robot based on anthropomorphism and often attribute the cause and responsibility for a failure in human-robot interactions to the robot. This study investigated the relationship between mind perception, a psychological scale of anthropomorphism, and attribution of the cause and responsibility in human-robot interactions. Participants played a repeated noncooperative game with a human, robot, or computer agent, where their monetary rewards depended on the outcome. They completed questionnaires on mind perception regarding the agent and whether the participant's own or the agent's decisions resulted in the unexpectedly small reward. We extracted two factors of Experience (capacity to sense and feel) and Agency (capacity to plan and act) from the mind perception scores. Then, correlation and structural equation modeling (SEM) approaches were used to analyze the data. The findings showed that mind perception influenced attribution processes differently for each agent type. In the human condition, decreased Agency score during the game led to greater causal attribution to the human agent, consequently also increasing the degree of responsibility attribution to the human agent. In the robot condition, the post-game Agency score decreased the degree of causal attribution to the robot, and the post-game Experience score increased the degree of responsibility to the robot. These relationships were not observed in the computer condition. The study highlights the importance of considering mind perception in designing appropriate causal and responsibility attribution in human-robot interactions and developing socially acceptable robots.

Brief Report: The Effectiveness of Hugging a Huggable Device Before Having a Conversation with an Unfamiliar Person for Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Sensory overresponsivity (SOR) emerges before anxiety and positively predicts subsequent increasing levels of anxiety in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Sensory seeking behavior occurs as compensation for SOR, and individuals may seek sensory input in one sensory domain to compensate for SOR. Tactile seeking behavior is sufficient to decrease social anxiety in communicating with unfamiliar people. We assessed the effectiveness of hugging a huggable device before a conversation for reducing the psychological stress associated with speaking to an unfamiliar person or robot. Our analysis showed a significant effect, with Hugvie contributing to decreased stress for both interlocutors. Thus, this study demonstrated the efficacy of hugging it before conversation, which emphasizes the importance of tactile seeking for individuals with ASD.

Brief Report: A Novel System to Evaluate Autism Spectrum Disorders Using Two Humanoid Robots.

We investigated the feasibility of our novel evaluation system for use with children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). We prepared the experimental setting with two humanoid robots in reference to the birthday party scene in the Autism Diagnostic Observational Schedule (ADOS). We assessed the relationship between social communication ability measured in the ADOS condition (i.e., with a human clinician) and in a robotic condition for children with ASD. There were significant correlations between the social communication scores in the gold-standard ADOS condition and the robotic condition for children with ASD. The current work provides support for a unique application of a robotic system (i.e., two robot-mediated interaction) to evaluate the severity of autistic traits for children with ASD.

Brief Report: Evaluating the Utility of Varied Technological Agents to Elicit Social Attention from Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Technological agents could be effective tools to be used in interventions for enhancing social orienting for some young children with ASD. We examined response to social bids in preschool children with ASD and typical development (TD) at a very early age (i.e., around 3 years) using social prompts presented by technological agents of various forms and human comparisons. Children with ASD demonstrated less response overall to social bids compared to TD controls, across agents or human. They responded more often to a simple humanoid robot and the simple avatar compared to the human. These results support the potential utilization of specific robotic and technological agents for harnessing and potentially increasing motivation to socially-relevant behaviors in some young children with ASD.

The impact of robotic intervention on joint attention in children with autism spectrum disorders.

Background: A growing body of anecdotal evidence indicates that the use of robots may provide unique opportunities for assisting children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, previous studies investigating the effects of interventions using robots on joint attention (JA) in children with ASD have shown insufficient results. The robots used in these studies could not turn their eyes, which was a limitation preventing the robot from resembling a human agent. Methods: We compared the behavior of children with ASD with that of children with typical development (TD) during a JA elicitation task while the children interacted with either a human or a robotic agent. We used the robot "CommU," which has clear eyes and can turn its eyes, for the robotic intervention. The age range of the participants was limited to 5-6 years. Results: Sixty-eight participants participated in this study, including 30 (10 females and 20 males) children with ASD and 38 (13 females and 25 males) children with TD. The participants were randomly assigned to one of the following two groups: the robotic intervention group or the control group. JA in the children with ASD was better during the robotic intervention than during the human agent intervention. These children exhibited improved performance in the JA task with human after interacting with the robot CommU. JA was differentially facilitated by the human and robotic agents between the ASD and TD children. Conclusions: The findings of this study significantly contribute to the literature on the impact of robots on JA and provide information regarding the suitability of specific robot types for therapeutic use.