Shared Knowledge in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)

According to the Theory of Natural Pedagogy, object-directed emotion may provide different information depending on the context: in a communicative context, the information conveys culturally shared knowledge regarding the emotional valence of an object and is generalizable to other individuals, whereas, in a non-communicative context, information is interpreted as a subjective disposition of the person expressing the emotion, i.e., personal preference. We hypothesized that this genericity bias, already present in infants, may be a feature of human communication and, thus, present at all ages. We further questioned the effects of robotic ostensive cues. To explore these possibilities, we presented object-directed emotions in communicative and non-communicative contexts under two conditions: adult participants (N = 193) were split into those who underwent the human-demonstrator condition and those who underwent the robot-demonstrator condition, i.e., a human actor or a robot displayed object-directed emotions, respectively. Questionnaires further assessed the participants' attachment style and mentalization ability. The results showed that (1) Natural Pedagogy Theory applies to humans across the lifespan; (2) Shared knowledge depends on the contexts (communicative vs. non-communicative) and who is sharing the information (human or robot); and (3) robotic ostensive cues trigger participants' attention, conversely, in their absence, participants do not turn the robot into a communicative partner by not assigning it a communicative intention due to a difficulty in reading the robot's mind. Taken together, our findings indicate that robotic ostensive cues may ease the human-robot interaction (HRI), which is also biased by the human attachment style. The study has been preregistered in Open Science Framework, OSF on September 9, 2021 (Registration DOI ).

Automated summary

According to the Theory of Natural Pedagogy, object-directed emotion conveys culturally shared knowledge in communicative contexts and personal preference in non-communicative contexts. This bias is present in infants and throughout the lifespan, and may be influenced by robotic ostensive cues. The study found that shared knowledge depends on context and who is sharing the information (human or robot), and robotic ostensive cues facilitate human-robot interaction. The study also highlights the impact of human attachment style on the interaction.