Sense of Agency (SoA) is the feeling of control over one's actions and their consequences. In social contexts, people experience a "vicarious" SoA over other humans' actions; however, the phenomenon disappears when the other agent is a computer. This study aimed to investigate the factors that determine when humans experience vicarious SoA in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). To this end, in two experiments, we disentangled two potential contributing factors: (1) the possibility of representing the robot's actions and (2) the adoption of Intentional Stance towards robots. Participants performed an Intentional Binding (IB) task reporting the time of occurrence for self- or robot-generated actions or sensory outcomes. To assess the role of action representation, the robot either performed a physical keypress (Experiment 1) or "acted" by sending a command via Bluetooth (Experiment 2). Before the experiment, attribution of intentionality to the robot was assessed. Results showed that when participants judged the occurrence of the action, vicarious SoA was predicted by the degree of attributed intentionality, but only when the robot's action was physical. Conversely, digital actions elicited the reversed effect of vicarious IB, suggesting that disembodied actions of robots are perceived as non-intentional. When participants judged the occurrence of the sensory outcome, vicarious SoA emerged only when the causing action was physical. Notably, intentionality attribution predicted vicarious SoA for sensory outcomes independently of the nature of the causing event, physical or digital. In conclusion, both intentionality attribution and action representation play a crucial role for vicarious SoA in HRI.

Roselli, C., Ciardo, F., Wykowska, A. (2022). Intentions with actions: The role of intentionality attribution on the vicarious sense of agency in Human-Robot interaction. THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 75(4 (April 2022)), 616-632 [10.1177/17470218211042003].

Intentions with actions: The role of intentionality attribution on the vicarious sense of agency in Human-Robot interaction

Roselli, C;Ciardo, F;
2022

Abstract

Sense of Agency (SoA) is the feeling of control over one's actions and their consequences. In social contexts, people experience a "vicarious" SoA over other humans' actions; however, the phenomenon disappears when the other agent is a computer. This study aimed to investigate the factors that determine when humans experience vicarious SoA in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). To this end, in two experiments, we disentangled two potential contributing factors: (1) the possibility of representing the robot's actions and (2) the adoption of Intentional Stance towards robots. Participants performed an Intentional Binding (IB) task reporting the time of occurrence for self- or robot-generated actions or sensory outcomes. To assess the role of action representation, the robot either performed a physical keypress (Experiment 1) or "acted" by sending a command via Bluetooth (Experiment 2). Before the experiment, attribution of intentionality to the robot was assessed. Results showed that when participants judged the occurrence of the action, vicarious SoA was predicted by the degree of attributed intentionality, but only when the robot's action was physical. Conversely, digital actions elicited the reversed effect of vicarious IB, suggesting that disembodied actions of robots are perceived as non-intentional. When participants judged the occurrence of the sensory outcome, vicarious SoA emerged only when the causing action was physical. Notably, intentionality attribution predicted vicarious SoA for sensory outcomes independently of the nature of the causing event, physical or digital. In conclusion, both intentionality attribution and action representation play a crucial role for vicarious SoA in HRI.
Articolo in rivista - Articolo scientifico
Human-Robot Interaction; Intentional Binding; Intentional Stance; Vicarious Sense of Agency;
English
2-set-2021
2022
75
4 (April 2022)
616
632
none
Roselli, C., Ciardo, F., Wykowska, A. (2022). Intentions with actions: The role of intentionality attribution on the vicarious sense of agency in Human-Robot interaction. THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 75(4 (April 2022)), 616-632 [10.1177/17470218211042003].
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/10281/463159
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