Social Transmission of Information through Virtual Robotic Agents

Owais Hamid, Shruti Chandra, Kerstin Dautenhahn, Kerstin Dautenhahn, Chrystopher Nehaniv, Chrystopher Nehaniv

2022

Abstract

Social learning includes simple or complex social mechanisms that allow us to understand cooperation and communication in animals, giving them better chances to survive for longer and thrive as a society. Specifically, certain types of social learning such as observational conditioning and stimulus enhancement have been investigated in the context of social information spread between primates. However, not many studies have utilized such social learning mechanisms to study social learning between humans and artificial agents. In the work described here, we seek to understand if and how simple social learning mechanisms can influence human participants using an online game platform with an immersive first person experience built through Unity. Specifically, we designed a study inspired by experiments in behavioural sciences to investigate whether and to what extent, a robotic agent can influence human’s actions. The study compared two conditions in which the robot showed body-language based emotions in a positive or negative manner that could enhance certain stimuli for the human participants and influence their decision making. From this, we wanted to understand whether these effects are socially learned by humans. Objective (position of player in-game) and Subjective (questionnaires) measures were recorded, and markers using the objective data suggest successful social transmission of information. We believe this approach can make a novel contribution to the field of Human Interaction with Artificial Agents.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Hamid O., Chandra S., Dautenhahn K. and Nehaniv C. (2022). Social Transmission of Information through Virtual Robotic Agents. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 3: ICAART, ISBN 978-989-758-547-0, pages 361-372. DOI: 10.5220/0010823000003116

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icaart22,
author={Owais Hamid and Shruti Chandra and Kerstin Dautenhahn and Chrystopher Nehaniv},
title={Social Transmission of Information through Virtual Robotic Agents},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 3: ICAART,},
year={2022},
pages={361-372},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0010823000003116},
isbn={978-989-758-547-0},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 3: ICAART,
TI - Social Transmission of Information through Virtual Robotic Agents
SN - 978-989-758-547-0
AU - Hamid O.
AU - Chandra S.
AU - Dautenhahn K.
AU - Nehaniv C.
PY - 2022
SP - 361
EP - 372
DO - 10.5220/0010823000003116