Theta synchronization as a neural marker of flexible (re-)use of socio-cognitive mechanisms for a new category of (artificial) interaction partners.

Previous work shows that in some instances artificial agents, such as robots, can elicit higher-order socio-cognitive mechanisms, similar to those elicited by humans. This suggests that these socio-cognitive mechanisms, such as mentalizing processes, originally developed for interaction with other humans, might be flexibly (re-)used, or "hijacked", for approaching this new category of interaction partners (Wykowska, 2020). In this study, we set out to identify neural markers of such flexible reuse of socio-cognitive mechanisms. We focused on fronto-parietal theta synchronization, as it has been proposed to be a substrate of cognitive flexibility in general (Fries, 2005). We analyzed EEG data from two experiments (Bossi et al., 2020; Roselli et al., submitted), in which participants completed a test measuring their individual likelihood to adopt the intentional stance towards robots, the intentional stance (IST) test. Our results show that participants with higher scores on the IST, indicating that they had higher likelihood of adopting the intentional stance towards a robot, had a significantly higher theta synchronization value, relative to participants with lower scores on the IST. These results suggest that long-range synchronization in the theta band might be a marker socio-cognitive process that can be flexibly applied towards non-human agents, such as robots.

The impact of facial expression and communicative gaze of a humanoid robot on individual Sense of Agency.

Sense of Agency (SoA) is the feeling of control over one's actions and their outcomes. A well-established implicit measure of SoA is the temporal interval estimation paradigm, in which participants estimate the time interval between a voluntary action and its sensory consequence. In the present study, we aimed to investigate whether the valence of action outcome modulated implicit SoA. The valence was manipulated through interaction partner's (i) positive/negative facial expression, or (ii) type of gaze (gaze contact or averted gaze). The interaction partner was the humanoid robot iCub. In Experiment 1, participants estimated the time interval between the onset of their action (head movement towards the robot), and the robot's facial expression (happy vs. sad face). Experiment 2 was identical, but the outcome of participants' action was the type of robot's gaze (gaze contact vs. averted). In Experiment 3, we assessed-in a within-subject design-the combined effect of robot's type of facial expression and type of gaze. Results showed that, while the robot's facial expression did not affect participants' SoA (Experiment 1), the type of gaze affected SoA in both Experiment 2 and Experiment 3. Overall, our findings showed that the robot's gaze is a more potent factor than facial expression in modulating participants' implicit SoA.

Human-likeness and attribution of intentionality predict vicarious sense of agency over humanoid robot actions.

Sense of Agency (SoA) is the feeling of being in control of one's actions and their outcomes. In a social context, people can experience a "vicarious" SoA over another human's actions; however, it is still controversial whether the same occurs in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). The present study aimed at understanding whether humanoid robots may elicit vicarious SoA in humans, and whether the emergence of this phenomenon depends on the attribution of intentionality towards robots. We asked adult participants to perform an Intentional Binding (IB) task alone and with the humanoid iCub robot, reporting the time of occurrence of both self- and iCub-generated actions. Before the experiment, participants' degree of attribution of intentionality towards robots was assessed. Results showed that participants experienced vicarious SoA over iCub-generated actions. Moreover, intentionality attribution positively predicted the magnitude of vicarious SoA. In conclusion, our results highlight the importance of factors such as human-likeness and attribution of intentionality for the emergence of vicarious SoA towards robots.

Intentions with actions: The role of intentionality attribution on the vicarious sense of agency in Human-Robot interaction.

Sense of Agency (SoA) is the feeling of control over one's actions and their consequences. In social contexts, people experience a "vicarious" SoA over other humans' actions; however, the phenomenon disappears when the other agent is a computer. This study aimed to investigate the factors that determine when humans experience vicarious SoA in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). To this end, in two experiments, we disentangled two potential contributing factors: (1) the possibility of representing the robot's actions and (2) the adoption of Intentional Stance towards robots. Participants performed an Intentional Binding (IB) task reporting the time of occurrence for self- or robot-generated actions or sensory outcomes. To assess the role of action representation, the robot either performed a physical keypress (Experiment 1) or "acted" by sending a command via Bluetooth (Experiment 2). Before the experiment, attribution of intentionality to the robot was assessed. Results showed that when participants judged the occurrence of the action, vicarious SoA was predicted by the degree of attributed intentionality, but only when the robot's action was physical. Conversely, digital actions elicited the reversed effect of vicarious IB, suggesting that disembodied actions of robots are perceived as non-intentional. When participants judged the occurrence of the sensory outcome, vicarious SoA emerged only when the causing action was physical. Notably, intentionality attribution predicted vicarious SoA for sensory outcomes independently of the nature of the causing event, physical or digital. In conclusion, both intentionality attribution and action representation play a crucial role for vicarious SoA in HRI.

Proposta de um novo perfil gerencial: contribuicao para assistencia primaria / A new management outline proposal: contribution to elementary assistance

Apresenta o processo de capacitacao adotado pela Secretaria Municipal de Higiene e Saude de Marilia - SP, na busca de mudancas do paradigma gerencial. Descreve o metodo utilizado: Curso de Capacitacao Gerencial (GERUS) e faz uma avaliacao de resultados (MMSC)