Article published in:
Gaze in Human-Robot Communication
Edited by Frank Broz, Hagen Lehmann, Bilge Mutlu and Yukiko Nakano
[Benjamins Current Topics 81] 2015
► pp. 33–46

Can infants use robot gaze for object learning?

The effect of verbalization

Previous research has shown that although infants follow the gaze direction of robots, robot gaze does not facilitate infants’ learning for objects. The present study examined whether robot gaze affects infants’ object learning when the gaze behavior was accompanied by verbalizations. Twelve-month-old infants were shown videos in which a robot with accompanying verbalizations gazed at an object. The results showed that infants not only followed the robot’s gaze direction but also preferentially attended to the cued object when the ostensive verbal signal was present. Moreover, infants showed enhanced processing of the cued object when ostensive and referential verbal signals were increasingly present. These effects were not observed when mere nonverbal sound stimuli instead of verbalizations were added. Taken together, our findings indicate that robot gaze accompanying verbalizations facilitates infants’ object learning, suggesting that verbalizations are important in the design of robot agents from which infants can learn.
Keywords: cognitive development, gaze following, humanoid robot, infant learning, verbalization
Published online: 16 December 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.81.03oku
References
Arita, A., Hiraki, K., Kanda, T., & Ishiguro, H
(2005) Can we talk to robots? Ten-month-old infants expected interactive humanoid robots to be talked to by persons. Cognition, 95, B49–B57. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Baldwin, D.A
(1991) Infants’ contribution to the achievement of joint reference. Child Development, 62, 875–890. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Baron-Cohen, S
(1994) How to build a baby that can read minds: Cognitive mechanisms in mindreading. Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive/Current Psychology of Cognition, 13, 513–552.Google Scholar
Bayliss, A.P., Frischen, A., Fenske, M.J., & Tipper, S.P
(2007) Affective evaluations of objects are influenced by observed gaze direction and emotional expression. Cognition, 104, 644–653. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bayliss, A.P., Paul, M.A., Cannon, P.R., & Tipper, S.P
(2006) Gaze cuing and affective judgments of objects: I like what you look at. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 13, 1061–1066. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Becchio, C., Bertone, C., & Castiello, U
(2008) How the gaze of others influences object processing. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12, 254–258. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Biro, S., & Leslie, A.M
(2007) Infants’ perception of goal-directed actions: Development through cue-based bootstrapping. Developmental Science, 10, 379–398. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cleveland, A., Schug, M., & Striano, T
(2007) Joint attention and object learning in 5- and 7-month-old infants. Infant and Child Development, 16, 295–306. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cleveland, A. & Striano, T
(2008) Televised social interaction and object learning in 14- and 18-month-old infants. Infant Behavior & Development, 31, 326–331. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Csibra, G., & Gergely, G
(2009) Natural pedagogy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13, 148–153. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2011) Natural pedagogy as evolutionary adaptation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 366, 1149–1157. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Farroni, T., Massaccesi, S., Pividori, D., & Johnson, M.H
(2004) Gaze following in newborns. Infancy, 5, 39–60. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Flom, R., Deák, G.O., Phill, C.G., & Pick, A.D
(2004) Nine-month-olds’ shared visual attention as a function of gesture and object location. Infant Behavior & Development, 27, 181–194. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Flom, R., Lee, K., & Muir, D
(2007) Gaze-following: Its development and significance. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.Google Scholar
Gredebäck, G., Theuring, C., Hauf, P., & Kenward, B
(2008) The microstructure of infants’ gaze as they view adult shifts in overt attention. Infancy, 13, 533–543. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Itakura, S
(2008) Development of mentalizing and communication: From viewpoint of developmental cybernetics and developmental cognitive neuroscience. IEICE Transactions on Communications, E91-B, 2109–2117. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Itakura, S., Ishida, H., Kanda, T., Shimada, Y., Ishiguro, H., & Lee, K
(2008a) How to build an intentional android: Infants’ imitation of a robot’s goal-directed actions. Infancy, 13, 519–532. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Itakura, S., Okanda, M., & Moriguchi, Y
(2008b) Discovering mind: Development of mentalizing in human children. In S. Itakura & K. Fujita (Eds.), Origins of social mind: Evolutionary and developmental view (pp.179–198). Springer. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, S.C., Booth, A., & O’Hearn, K
(2001) Inferring the goals of a nonhuman agent. Cognitive Development, 16, 637–656. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, S., Slaughter, V., & Carey, S
(1998) Whose gaze will infants follow? The elicitation of gaze following in 12-month-olds. Developmental Science, 1, 233–238. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kanda, T., Hirano, T., Eaton, D., & Ishiguro, H
(2004) Interactive robots as social partners and peer tutors for children: A field trial. Human-Computer Interaction, 19, 61–84. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kanda, T., Sato, R., Saiwaki, N., & Ishiguro, H
(2007) A two-month field trial in an elementary school for long-term human-robot interaction. IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 23, 962–971. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Martin, A., Onishi, K.H., & Vouloumanos, A
(2012) Understanding the abstract role of speech in communication at 12 months. Cognition, 123, 50–60. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Meltzoff, A.N., Brooks, R., Shon, A.P., & Rao, R.P.N
(2010) “Social” robots are psychological agents for infants: A test of gaze following. Neural Networks, 23, 966–972. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Meltzoff, A.N., Kuhl, P.K., Movellan, J., & Sejnowski, T.J
(2009) Foundations for a new science of learning. Science, 325, 284–288. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Moses, L.J., Baldwin, D.A., Rosicky, J.G., & Tidball, G
(2001) Evidence for referential understanding in the emotions domain at twelve and eighteen months. Child Development, 72, 718–735. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mumme, D.L., Fernald, A., & Herrera, C
(1996) Infants’ responses to facial and vocal emotional signals in a social referencing paradigm. Child Development, 67, 3219–3237. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
O’Connell, L., Poulin-Dubois, D., Demke, T., & Guay, A
(2009) Can infants use a nonhuman agent’s gaze direction to establish word-object relations? Infancy, 14, 414–438. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Okumura, Y., Kanakogi, Y., Kanda, T., Ishiguro, H., & Itakura, S
(2013a) The power of human gaze on infant learning. Cognition, 128, 127–133. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2013b) Infants understand the referential nature of human gaze but not robot gaze. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 116, 86–95. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Parise, E., Cleveland, A., Costabile, A., & Striano, T
(2007) Influence of vocal cues on learning about objects in joint attention contexts. Infant Behavior & Development, 30, 380–384. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Reid, V.M., & Striano, T
(2005) Adult gaze influences infant attention and object processing: Implications for cognitive neuroscience. European Journal of Neuroscience, 21, 1763–1766. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Senju, A., & Csibra, G
(2008) Gaze following in human infants depends on communicative signals. Current Biology, 18, 668–671. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tanaka, F., Cicourel, A., & Movellan, J.R
(2007) Socialization between toddlers and robots at an early childhood education center. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA , 104, 17954–17958.
Theuring, C., Gredebäck, G., & Hauf, P
(2007) Object processing during a joint gaze following task. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 4, 65–79. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M
(1999) The cultural origins of human cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Topál, J., Gergely, G., Miklósi, Á., Erdohegyi, Á., & Csibra, G
(2008) Infants’ perseverative search errors are induced by pragmatic misinterpretation. Science, 321, 1831–1834. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Vaish, A., & Striano, T
(2004) Is visual reference necessary? Contributions of facial versus vocal cues in 12-month-olds’ social referencing behavior. Developmental Science, 7, 261–269. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Vouloumanos, A., Onishi, K.H., & Pogue, A
(2012) Twelve-month-old infants recognize that speech can communicate unobservable intentions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA , 109, 12933–12937.
Werry, I., Dautenhahn, K., & Harwin, W
(2001) Investigating a robot as a therapy partner for children with autism. In Proceedings of the 6th European Conference for the Advancement of Assistive Technology .
Yoon, J.M.D., Johnson, M.H., & Csibra, G
(2008) Communication-induced memory biases in preverbal infants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA , 105, 13690–13695.