Children’s psychological and moral attributions to a humanoid robot

textIn the near future, sophisticated social robots will become increasingly interwoven into our lives. Researchers have recently begun to examine people’s anthropomorphic conceptions of such robots, and a few have stressed the unique consequences that these technological agents may have for the psychological development of children developing around them. In the current set of studies, children were introduced to a humanoid robot, “Robbie the Robot.” Across the two studies, participants witnessed Robbie perform a harmful action, destroying a block tower that a child had purportedly built and was saving for later. Of primary interest in these two studies was whether children would hold Robbie the Robot morally accountable for the destructive act. It was predicted that judgments of moral accountability would depend on several different factors: whether the robot appeared to initiate its own actions, the age of the participant, and whether children attributed psychological properties, specifically intentional agency, to the robot. In Study 1, children were assigned to one of two experimental conditions: a controlled condition in which a confederate appeared to control the robot’s actions with a device that was tethered to the robot, and an autonomous condition in which the robot appeared to move of its own accord. Results revealed that children were significantly more likely to attribute psychological properties to the robot in the autonomous condition compared to the controlled condition. Compared to 7-year-olds, 5-year-olds were more likely to attribute psychological properties to the robot overall. In addition, results indicated that increasing cues to the robot’s autonomy indirectly affected moral accountability judgments through an increase in children’s attributions of intentions. Study 2 tested the hypothesis that children’s attributions of psychological agency, but not psychological experience, would increase after watching the robot commit a moral act. Overall, Study 2 results did not support this prediction, but key results from the first study were replicated and elucidated by the inclusion of a wider array of psychological properties as well as a measure of children’s judgments of the robot’s cuteness. Implications are discussed for human interaction with social robots and other rapidly evolving technologies, such as autonomous vehicles.Psycholog

Factors Influencing Cerebral Plasticity in the Normal and Injured Brain

An important development in behavioral neuroscience in the past 20 years has been the demonstration that it is possible to stimulate functional recovery after cerebral injury in laboratory animals. Rodent models of cerebral injury provide an important tool for developing such rehabilitation programs. The models include analysis at different levels including detailed behavioral paradigms, electrophysiology, neuronal morphology, protein chemistry, and epigenetics. A significant challenge for the next 20 years will be the translation of this work to improve the outcome from brain injury and disease in humans. Our goal in the article will be to synthesize the multidisciplinary laboratory work on brain plasticity and behavior in the injured brain to inform the development of rehabilitation programs

Development of anthropomorphism and moral concern for nonhuman entities

textRecent research has revealed that some adults tend to anthropomorphize more than others and that such people reason differently about nonhuman entities. Specifically, individuals who tend to anthropomorphize show greater concern for nonhuman entities and are more likely to be concerned for the environment. The proposed study extended this line of work to children, examining developmental patterns in anthropomorphism and behavior toward nonhuman entities. In one task children were asked whether or not different kinds of nonhuman entities (dogs, trees, robots, dolls) were capable of a range of psychological states (e.g., thinking, feeling). In a separate task with vignettes children were asked to judge the morality of actions that led to a negative consequence for a nonhuman target. The main prediction was that children who attributed more psychological properties to nonhuman entities would be more likely to exhibit concern for nonhuman targets in the moral stories. Overall, the results failed to capture a general relation between psychological attributions and moral judgments, perhaps owing to methodological shortcomings but perhaps also because children in our sample did not appear to exhibit general tendencies to anthropomorphize as adults have in previous research.Psycholog

Behavioral method for studying mirror neuron activity: repetitive action affects visual perception

International audienc