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Infants’ sensitivity to gestures by humans and anthropomorphic robots

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Date Issued:
2021
Summary:
Robotics have advanced to include highly anthropomorphic (human-like) entities. A novel eye-tracking paradigm was developed to assess infants’ sensitivity to communicative gestures by human and robotic informants. Infants from two age groups (5-9 months, n = 25; 10-15 months, n = 9) viewed a robotic or human informant pointing to locations where events would occur during experimental trials. Trials consisted of three phases: gesture, prediction, and event. Duration of looking (ms) to two areas of interest, target location and non-target location, was extracted. A series of paired t-tests revealed that only older infants in the human condition looked significantly longer to the target location during the prediction phase (p = .036). Future research is needed to tease apart what components of the robotic hand infants respond to differentially, and whether a robotic hand can be manipulated to increase infants’ sensitivity to social communication gestures executed by said robotic hand.
Title: Infants’ sensitivity to gestures by humans and anthropomorphic robots.
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Name(s): Stotler, Jacqueline, author
Wilcox, Teresa, Thesis advisor
Florida Atlantic University, Degree grantor
Department of Psychology
Charles E. Schmidt College of Science
Type of Resource: text
Genre: Electronic Thesis Or Dissertation
Date Created: 2021
Date Issued: 2021
Publisher: Florida Atlantic University
Place of Publication: Boca Raton, Fla.
Physical Form: application/pdf
Extent: 62 p.
Language(s): English
Summary: Robotics have advanced to include highly anthropomorphic (human-like) entities. A novel eye-tracking paradigm was developed to assess infants’ sensitivity to communicative gestures by human and robotic informants. Infants from two age groups (5-9 months, n = 25; 10-15 months, n = 9) viewed a robotic or human informant pointing to locations where events would occur during experimental trials. Trials consisted of three phases: gesture, prediction, and event. Duration of looking (ms) to two areas of interest, target location and non-target location, was extracted. A series of paired t-tests revealed that only older infants in the human condition looked significantly longer to the target location during the prediction phase (p = .036). Future research is needed to tease apart what components of the robotic hand infants respond to differentially, and whether a robotic hand can be manipulated to increase infants’ sensitivity to social communication gestures executed by said robotic hand.
Identifier: FA00013724 (IID)
Degree granted: Thesis (MA)--Florida Atlantic University, 2021.
Collection: FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection
Note(s): Includes bibliography.
Subject(s): Robotics
Infants
Eye tracking
Gesture
Held by: Florida Atlantic University Libraries
Sublocation: Digital Library
Persistent Link to This Record: http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00013724
Use and Reproduction: Copyright © is held by the author with permission granted to Florida Atlantic University to digitize, archive and distribute this item for non-profit research and educational purposes. Any reuse of this item in excess of fair use or other copyright exemptions requires permission of the copyright holder.
Use and Reproduction: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Host Institution: FAU
Is Part of Series: Florida Atlantic University Digital Library Collections.