Elsevier

Animal Behaviour

Volume 96, October 2014, Pages 69-77
Animal Behaviour

Ethorobotics applied to human behaviour: can animated objects influence children's behaviour in cognitive tasks?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2014.07.020Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Animated objects induce behavioural changes in children during a cognitive task.

  • They also induce performance changes in children during a cognitive task.

  • 3D objects are perceived as more realistic.

  • Animal-like objects induce more interest but lower performance.

  • Perceived capacity of judgement of robotic objects influence their level of acceptance.

The characteristics of human–human and human–animal interactions have been studied intensively. Previous studies showed that the presence of a third human party can influence motivation during a cognitive task, whereas a third animal party, not expected to make any judgement, does not have a similar impact. As a growing number of animated objects are created to interact with humans, we asked whether humans can perceive robots as potential interlocutors. The question of how these objects should be visually designed in order to be accepted by human users as interlocutors and assistants remains open, essentially owing to a lack of behavioural surveys. Therefore, the present study compared the impact of the presence of different animated objects on the behaviour and performance of primary school children during a cognitive task. Fifty-one primary school pupils (10 years 11 months ± 6 months) were individually given mental arithmetic tasks ‘supervised’ by a computer alone, or by the same computer assisted by an animated object (i.e. virtual human character, animal-shaped object covered with fur, humanoid metallic robot). Children's performances and behaviour were analysed. First, we found that animated objects were accepted as interacting partners, as they modified children's attention and influenced their emotional state in a positive way. Second, we found that the object design (human-, animal- or robot-like) influenced the children's reactions and performance in different ways. 3D objects (animal and robot), with more ‘live’ characteristics (e.g. motion), elicited more positive behaviours as well as fewer negative behaviours than the 2D character. However, the animal-like object decreased attention towards the computer more, and consequently also cognitive performance, than the human or humanoid ones. This study opens new research perspectives concerning the importance of the realism of robotic objects and the associated capacity of judgement on the level of acceptance by humans.

Section snippets

Study Subjects

Our study group included 51 pupils from two ‘CM2’ forms (i.e. 5th year primary school): 26 girls (mean ± SE = 10 years 10 months ± 4 months) and 25 boys (10 years 11 months ± 4 months). The study, performed in February–March 2012, took place in two French primary schools (Vannes: 13 girls and nine boys; Rennes: 13 girls and 16 boys).

Prior to experiments, parents completed a form in which they gave their agreement for the participation (based on video recording) of their children to this study. In this

Overall Behavioural Reactions and Performance

During this study, the children made very few sighs or positive or negative comments. Conversely, they looked at the computer very often. They often expressed self-directed behaviours, smiles, face pouts, repositioning and eye mimics (Fig. 2). The details of the behavioural and performance data (mean ± SE) are presented in Table 2, Table 3 (per child sex) and Table 4, Table 5 (per situation).

No differences between girls and boys could be found for the frequency of occurrence of behavioural

Discussion

The results of our study of children expected to perform a cognitive task in the presence of animated objects show that these objects influenced their behaviours and performance. All animated objects attracted the children's attention and obviously influenced their emotional state in a positive way. Therefore, animated objects such as robots do influence humans during cognitive tasks. However, the level and type of influence appeared to depend upon the object's appearance: 3D objects had more

Acknowledgments

The idea of this study was initiated during scientific discussions of the interdisciplinary GIS ‘Cerveau, Cognition, Société’ and EPT–MIAC programmes funded by the Université Européenne de Bretagne, directed by Philippe Blanchet and coordinated by Brigitte Le Pévédic. This study received financial support from the French Ministry of Research, the C.N.R.S. and the Brittany Region. We thank the direction and the staff of the primary schools, notably Ms Reginsi, for their logistic support. We also

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