Do Infants Consider a Robot as a Social Partner in Collaborative Activity?

Abstract

Human infants can consider humans as collaborative agents, but little is known about whether they also recognize robots as collaborative agents. This study investigated that how infants understand robot agents while they watched collaborative interactions between a human and a robot. We presented a novel visual habituation paradigm in which a human and a robot performed a collaborative activity to 13-month-old infants. Our findings suggested that 13-month-olds can appreciate robots as collaborative partners. We interpreted infants' expectancy violation responses to actions of the robot as facilitating their understanding about nonhuman agents as social partner.