The goal of this research project is to identify the source of children's ideas about the intelligence capabilities of robots. If children's beliefs are influenced by naïve biology theories, there is likely to be a strong relationship between animacy judgments (whether an entity is alive or not) and judgments of intelligence. However, if children's beliefs are influenced by prior experience with robots, there is no reason to assume intelligence and animacy would be related; rather, degree of prior exposure to robots would influence children's beliefs about robots' intelligence capabilities. Results suggest a relationship between animacy judgments and intelligence for children with little prior exposure to robots. For children with greater exposure, there is less of a relationship between intelligence and animacy judgments. Additionally, children with greater exposure attributed more intelligence to the robots than children with little exposure. It would seem that children with little robot experience are guided by their naïve theories of biology, while children with significant robot experience use ideas gathered from their prior experiences to make judgments about the intelligence capabilities of robots
