09/18 Karl MacDorman, IUPUI - Abstract
10/09 Nikolaus Troje, Queens University - Abstract
10/23 Emmanuel Sander, Univeritè Paris 8 - Abstract
10/30 James Crutchfield, UC Davis - Abstract
11/27 Bill Ramsey, Notre Dame - Abstract
12/04 Isabel Gauthier, Vanderbilt - Abstract

Abstract

9/18: Karl MacDorman, IUPUI
Title: The uncanny advantage of using androids in cognitive and social science research
Abstract: The development of robots that closely resemble human beings can contribute to cognitive and social science research. An android provides an experimental apparatus that has the potential to be controlled more precisely than any human actor. However, preliminary results indicate that only very humanlike devices can elicit the broad range of responses that people typically direct toward each other. Conversely, to build androids capable of emulating human behavior, we need to investigate social activity in detail and to develop models of the cognitive mechanisms that support this activity. Because of the reciprocal relationship between android development and the exploration of social mechanisms, it is necessary to establish the field of android science. Androids could be a key testing ground for social, cognitive, and neuroscientific theories as well as platform for their eventual unification. Nevertheless, subtle flaws in appearance and movement can be more apparent and more eerie in very humanlike robots. This uncanny phenomenon may be symptomatic of entities that elicit our model of a human other but do not measure up to it. If so, very humanlike robots may provide the best means of pinpointing what kinds of behavior are perceived as human, since deviations from human norms are more obvious in them than in more mechanical-looking robots. In pursuing this line of inquiry, it is essential to identify the mechanisms involved in evaluations of human likeness. One hypothesis is that, by playing on an innate fear of death, an uncanny robot elicits culturally-supported defense responses for coping with death's inevitability. An experiment, which borrows from methods used in terror management research, was performed to test this hypothesis.

MacDorman, K. F. & Ishiguro, H. (2006). The uncanny advantage of using androids in social and cognitive science research. Interaction Studies, 7(3), pp. 297-337.

10/9: Nikolaus Troje, Queens University
Title: Multiple inversion effects in biological motion perception: Evidence for a “life detector”?
Abstract: If biological motion point-light displays are presented upside-down adequate perception is strongly impaired. Reminiscent of the inversion effect in face recognition, it has been suggested that the inversion effect in biological motion is due to impaired configural processing in a highly trained expert system. I will present data that are incompatible with this view. Particularly, I will show that observers can readily retrieve information about direction from scrambled point-light displays of humans and animals. Even though all configural information is entirely disrupted, perception of these displays is still subject to a significant inversion effect. Inverting only parts of the display reveals that the information about direction as well as the associated inversion effect are entirely carried by the local motion of the feet. I will interpret these findings in terms of a visual filter that is tuned to the characteristic motion of the limbs of an animal in locomotion and hypothesize that this mechanism serves as a general detection system for the presence of articulated terrestrial animals.

10/23: Emmanuel Sander, Univeritè Paris 8
Title: TBA
Abstract: TBA

10/30: James Crutchfield, UC Davis
Title: TBA
Abstract: TBA

11/27: Bill Ramsey, Notre Dame
Title: TBA
Abstract: TBA

12/4: Isabel Gauthier, Vanderbilt
Title: TBA
Abstract: TBA