Perceptual crossing: the simplest online paradigm

Researchers in social cognition increasingly realize that many phenomena cannot be understood by investigating offline situations only, focusing on individual mechanisms and an observer perspective. There are processes of dynamic emergence specific to online situations, when two or more persons are engaged in a real-time interaction that are more than just the sum of the individual capacities or behaviors, and these require the study of online social interaction. Auvray et al.'s (2009) perceptual crossing paradigm offers possibly the simplest paradigm for studying such online interactions: two persons, a one-dimensional space, one bit of information, and a yes/no answer. This study has provoked a lot of resonance in different areas of research, including experimental psychology, computer/robot modeling, philosophy, psychopathology, and even in the field of design. In this article, we review and critically assess this body of literature. We give an overview of both behavioral experimental research and simulated agent modeling done using the perceptual crossing paradigm. We discuss different contexts in which work on perceptual crossing has been cited. This includes the controversy about the possible constitutive role of perceptual crossing for social cognition. We conclude with an outlook on future research possibilities, in particular those that could elucidate the link between online interaction dynamics and individual social cognition

Machine Impostors Can Avoid Human Detection and Interrupt the Formation of Stable Conventions by Imitating Past Interactions: A Minimal Turing Test

Supporting Information is available online at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cogs.13288#support-information-section .Interactions between humans and bots are increasingly common online, prompting some legislators to pass laws that require bots to disclose their identity. The Turing test is a classic thought experiment testing humans’ ability to distinguish a bot impostor from a real human from exchanging text messages. In the current study, we propose a minimal Turing test that avoids natural language, thus allowing us to study the foundations of human communication. In particular, we investigate the relative roles of conventions and reciprocal interaction in determining successful communication. Participants in our task could communicate only by moving an abstract shape in a 2D space. We asked participants to categorize their online social interaction as being with a human partner or a bot impostor. The main hypotheses were that access to the interaction history of a pair would make a bot impostor more deceptive and interrupt the formation of novel conventions between the human participants. Copying their previous interactions prevents humans from successfully communicating through repeating what already worked before. By comparing bots that imitate behavior from the same or a different dyad, we find that impostors are harder to detect when they copy the participants’ own partners, leading to less conventional interactions. We also show that reciprocity is beneficial for communicative success when the bot impostor prevents conventionality. We conclude that machine impostors can avoid detection and interrupt the formation of stable conventions by imitating past interactions, and that both reciprocity and conventionality are adaptive strategies under the right circumstances. Our results provide new insights into the emergence of communication and suggest that online bots mining personal information, for example, on social media, might become indistinguishable from humans more easily.Open access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL

WEHST: Wearable Engine for Human-Mediated Telepresence

This dissertation reports on the industrial design of a wearable computational device created to enable better emergency medical intervention for situations where electronic remote assistance is necessary. The design created for this doctoral project, which assists practices by paramedics with mandates for search-and-rescue (SAR) in hazardous environments, contributes to the field of human-mediated teleparamedicine (HMTPM). Ethnographic and industrial design aspects of this research considered the intricate relationships at play in search-and-rescue operations, which lead to the design of the system created for this project known as WEHST: Wearable Engine for Human-Mediated Telepresence. Three case studies of different teams were carried out, each focusing on making improvements to the practices of teams of paramedics and search-and-rescue technicians who use combinations of ambulance, airplane, and helicopter transport in specific chemical, biological, radioactive, nuclear and explosive (CBRNE) scenarios. The three paramedicine groups included are the Canadian Air Force 442 Rescue Squadron, Nelson Search and Rescue, and the British Columbia Ambulance Service Infant Transport Team. Data was gathered over a seven-year period through a variety of methods including observation, interviews, examination of documents, and industrial design. The data collected included physiological, social, technical, and ecological information about the rescuers. Actor-network theory guided the research design, data analysis, and design synthesis. All of this leads to the creation of the WEHST system. As identified, the WEHST design created in this dissertation project addresses the difficulty case-study participants found in using their radios in hazardous settings. As the research identified, a means of controlling these radios without depending on hands, voice, or speech would greatly improve communication, as would wearing sensors and other computing resources better linking operators, radios, and environments. WEHST responds to this need. WEHST is an instance of industrial design for a wearable “engine” for human-situated telepresence that includes eight interoperable families of wearable electronic modules and accompanying textiles. These make up a platform technology for modular, scalable and adaptable toolsets for field practice, pedagogy, or research. This document details the considerations that went into the creation of the WEHST design

Implementación de un sistema de "test multi-jugador de cruce perceptual"

El objetivo de este proyecto de fin de carrera es conseguir un marco de ejecución virtual para experimentos de cruce perceptual (paradigma para la realización de experimentos de cognición social, basado en los trabajos realizados en la universidad francesa de Compiègne en 2009 de Auvray, Lenay y Stewart). Se desarrollará una aplicación virtual a la que se accederá desde computadoras situadas en habitaciones separadas. Cada participante modificará la posición de un cursor en la pantalla a lo largo de una línea mediante el movimiento transversal de su ratón, y recibirá un estímulo en el momento en que el cursor se cruce con un objeto durante su movimiento. Los sujetos podrán cruzarse con dos tipos de cosas: el cursor real del otro participante (persona) o con el cursor de un objeto artificial (móvil o fijo). Se les pide a los sujetos que sean capaces de identificar cuándo la interacción establecida es con el humano y cuando no. Para dar solución al objetivo planteado se implementará una aplicación web, que trabajará sobre un servidor que soporte la tecnología WebSockets, que aporta un canal de intercambio de información bidireccional real entre el servidor y el cliente en tiempo real. El experimento se plantea sobre una red local para minimizar la latencia en la comunicación. Para la construcción del "front-end" se utilizará una combinación de HTML5, CSS y JavaScript. Se construirá un framewok que permita realizar experimentos formados, por un lado, por dos contrincantes (persona vs persona o persona vs bot) y, por otro, por múltiples participantes, donde cada persona se enfrentará a otro participante (persona), a un objeto móvil y a un objeto fijo. En el primer tipo de experimento, al terminar cada prueba, el sujeto debe responder si ha interactuado con otra persona o con un objeto artificial. En el segundo tipo, durante la prueba, el sujeto podrá hacer click cuando crea que esta interactuando con un igual. El tipo de objeto móvil, en el segundo caso, podrá ser la sombra del oponente humano con cierto retardo en tiempo o a una distancia marcada. Con esta plataforma se pretenden analizar todos los aspectos presentes en un intercambio comunicativo humano puesto que existen elementos que se refieren a las contingencias de la interacción que nos permiten identificar que una comunicación real se está produciendo. Pretendemos analizar las propiedades que permiten a los interlocutores construir patrones de interacción comunes que les hagan regular mutuamente sus acciones

Interaction dynamics and autonomy in cognitive systems

The concept of autonomy is of crucial importance for understanding life and cognition. Whereas cellular and organismic autonomy is based in the self-production of the material infrastructure sustaining the existence of living beings as such, we are interested in how biological autonomy can be expanded into forms of autonomous agency, where autonomy as a form of organization is extended into the behaviour of an agent in interaction with its environment (and not its material self-production). In this thesis, we focus on the development of operational models of sensorimotor agency, exploring the construction of a domain of interactions creating a dynamical interface between agent and environment. We present two main contributions to the study of autonomous agency: First, we contribute to the development of a modelling route for testing, comparing and validating hypotheses about neurocognitive autonomy. Through the design and analysis of specific neurodynamical models embedded in robotic agents, we explore how an agent is constituted in a sensorimotor space as an autonomous entity able to adaptively sustain its own organization. Using two simulation models and different dynamical analysis and measurement of complex patterns in their behaviour, we are able to tackle some theoretical obstacles preventing the understanding of sensorimotor autonomy, and to generate new predictions about the nature of autonomous agency in the neurocognitive domain. Second, we explore the extension of sensorimotor forms of autonomy into the social realm. We analyse two cases from an experimental perspective: the constitution of a collective subject in a sensorimotor social interactive task, and the emergence of an autonomous social identity in a large-scale technologically-mediated social system. Through the analysis of coordination mechanisms and emergent complex patterns, we are able to gather experimental evidence indicating that in some cases social autonomy might emerge based on mechanisms of coordinated sensorimotor activity and interaction, constituting forms of collective autonomous agency