NDLI: Sensing sociality in dogs: what may make an interactive robot social?

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Lakatos, Gabriella Janiak, Mariusz Malek, Lukasz Muszynski, Robert Kok, Veronika Tchon, Krzysztof Miklósi, Á.
Copyright Year	2013
Abstract	This study investigated whether dogs would engage in social interactions with an unfamiliar robot, utilize the communicative signals it provides and to examine whether the level of sociality shown by the robot affects the dogs’ performance. We hypothesized that dogs would react to the communicative signals of a robot more successfully if the robot showed interactive social behaviour in general (towards both humans and dogs) than if it behaved in a machinelike, asocial way. The experiment consisted of an interactive phase followed by a pointing session, both with a human and a robotic experimenter. In the interaction phase, dogs witnessed a 6-min interaction episode between the owner and a human experimenter and another 6-min interaction episode between the owner and the robot. Each interaction episode was followed by the pointing phase in which the human/robot experimenter indicated the location of hidden food by using pointing gestures (two-way choice test). The results showed that in the interaction phase, the dogs’ behaviour towards the robot was affected by the differential exposure. Dogs spent more time staying near the robot experimenter as compared to the human experimenter, with this difference being even more pronounced when the robot behaved socially. Similarly, dogs spent more time gazing at the head of the robot experimenter when the situation was social. Dogs achieved a significantly lower level of performance (finding the hidden food) with the pointing robot than with the pointing human; however, separate analysis of the robot sessions suggested that gestures of the socially behaving robot were easier for the dogs to comprehend than gestures of the asocially behaving robot. Thus, the level of sociality shown by the robot was not enough to elicit the same set of social behaviours from the dogs as was possible with humans, although sociality had a positive effect on dog–robot interactions.
Starting Page	387
Ending Page	397
Page Count	11
File Format	PDF
ISSN	14359448
Journal	Animal Cognition
Volume Number	17
Issue Number	2
e-ISSN	14359456
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Publisher Date	2013-09-12
Publisher Place	Berlin, Heidelberg
Access Restriction	Subscribed
Subject Keyword	Dogs Robots Third-party interactions Pointing Behavioural Sciences Zoology Human Physiology Evolutionary Biology
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Experimental and Cognitive Psychology Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

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