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Decoding the Robot’s Glance : How Robotic Gaze Validity Shapes Human Cognition and Behavior

Kruse, Devin (2025) Decoding the Robot’s Glance : How Robotic Gaze Validity Shapes Human Cognition and Behavior.

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Abstract:As humanoid robots move beyond automated tasks towards collaborative and interactive partners in diverse fields such as healthcare or education, humans’ innate tendency to implicitly trust robotic decisions can lead to suboptimal and even dangerous consequences. The uncritical reliance on inaccurate robotic cues could override human judgment, potentially causing serious errors, for example, administering the wrong medication based on the robot’s misleading gestures or mishandling hazardous materials in a factory. This work investigated how the reliability of a robot's referential gaze, in tasks of varying complexity, affects human-robot interaction. A self-constructed gaze control system for a screen-based robot was incorporated within a classification game, where participants received attentional gaze cues from the robots. These referential cues differed per robot in their reliability, leading to a high-validity robot, a low-validity robot, and a third neutral robot, which did not execute any referential gaze. Findings indicate that the existence of referential gaze, reliable or not, leads to significantly higher gaze predictability and faster decision-making as participants develop their own interaction strategies. We found that participants manifested a strong cognitive bias to trust and follow the gaze of the high-validity robot, which was similarly preferred in subjective ratings of anthropomorphism, likability, and intelligence.
Item Type:Essay (Bachelor)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:77 psychology
Programme:Psychology BSc (56604)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/107021
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