Effect of an Agent's Contingent Responses on Maintaining an Intentional Stance

Abstract

To establish social relationships between a human and an artificial agent, the agent has to induce and maintain the intentional stance on its human partner. In this study, we focus on contingency, which is the behavior that occurs synchronously with the last action, and the icebreaker, which is a facilitation exercise that helps start an interaction. The aim of this study is to investigate whether an agent that implements contingent responses is capable of inducing and maintaining an intentional stance. We conducted an experiment using the contingent agent and a ``subgoal-oriented agent' as a control group. As a result, we conclude that the contingent responses are capable of maintaining the intentional stance during the main task from the behavior analysis. On the other hand, we suggested that only the participants who actively joined the icebreaker with the contingent agent be induced into taking an intentional stance. From these results, we conclude that the contingent responses could maintain the intentional stance but not induce it.