Conscious/unconscious emotional dialogues in typical children in the presence of an InterActor Robot

Abstract

In the present interdisciplinary study, we have combined cognitive neuroscience knowledge, psychiatry and engineering knowledge with the aim to analyze emotion, language and un/consciousness in children aged 6 (n=20) and 9 (n=20) years via a listener-speaker communication. The speaker was always a child; the listener was a Human InterActor or a Robot InterActor, i.e.,. a small robot which reacts to speech expression by nodding only. Unconscious nonverbal emotional expression associated with physiological data (heart rate) as well as conscious process related to behavioral data (number of nouns and verbs in addition reported feelings) were considered. The results showed that 1) the heart rate was higher for children aged 6 years old than for children aged 9 years old when the InterActor was the robot; 2) the number of words (nouns and verbs) expressed by both age groups was higher when the InterActor was a human. It was lower for the children aged 6 years than for the children aged 9 years. Even if a difference of consciousness exists amongst the two groups, everything happens as if the InterActor Robot would allow children to elaborate a multivariate equation encoding and conceptualizing within their brain, and externalizing into unconscious nonverbal emotional behavior i.e., automatic activity. The Human InterActor would allow children to externalize the elaborated equation into conscious verbal behavior (words), i.e., controlled activity. Unconscious and conscious processes would not only depend on natural environments but also on artificial environments such as robots.