Can a robot lie? Young children's understanding of intentionality beneath false statements

Peretti, Giulia; Manzi, Federico; Dio, Cinzia Di; Cangelosi, Angelo; Harris, Paul L.; Massaro, Davide; Marchetti, Antonella

doi:10.1002/icd.2398

Cited by 10 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 110 publications

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“…The present study aimed to validate a new and agile measure, the Attribution of Mental State Questionnaire (AMS-Q) – already widely used in studies with children ( Di Dio et al, 2018 , 2020a , b ; Manzi et al, 2020b ; Peretti et al, 2023 ) and adults ( Manzi et al, 2021c ) – which assesses the attribution of mental and sensory states primarily to human. However, to the authors’ knowledge, there is no currently validated measure to compare the mental traits of human and nonhuman agents to evaluate the level of mental anthropomorphization of nonhuman agents, including living and nonliving entities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development and validation of the Attribution of Mental States Questionnaire (AMS-Q): A reference tool for assessing anthropomorphism

et al. 2023

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Attributing mental states to others, such as feelings, beliefs, goals, desires, and attitudes, is an important interpersonal ability, necessary for adaptive relationships, which underlies the ability to mentalize. To evaluate the attribution of mental and sensory states, a new 23-item measure, the Attribution of Mental States Questionnaire (AMS-Q), has been developed. The present study aimed to investigate the dimensionality of the AMS-Q and its psychometric proprieties in two studies. Study 1 focused on the development of the questionnaire and its factorial structure in a sample of Italian adults (N = 378). Study 2 aimed to confirm the findings in a new sample (N = 271). Besides the AMS-Q, Study 2 included assessments of Theory of Mind (ToM), mentalization, and alexithymia. A Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and a Parallel Analysis (PA) of the data from Study 1 yielded three factors assessing mental states with positive or neutral valence (AMS-NP), mental states with negative valence (AMS-N), and sensory states (AMS-S). These showed satisfactory reliability indexes. AMS-Q’s whole-scale internal consistency was excellent. Multigroup Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) further confirmed the three-factor structure. The AMS-Q subscales also showed a consistent pattern of correlation with associated constructs in the theoretically predicted ways, relating positively to ToM and mentalization and negatively to alexithymia. Thus, the questionnaire is considered suitable to be easily administered and sensitive for assessing the attribution of mental and sensory states to humans. The AMS-Q can also be administered with stimuli of nonhuman agents (e.g., animals, inanimate things, and even God); this allows the level of mental anthropomorphization of other agents to be assessed using the human as a term of comparison, providing important hints in the perception of nonhuman entities as more or less mentalistic compared to human beings, and identifying what factors are required for the attribution of human mental traits to nonhuman agents, further helping to delineate the perception of others’ minds.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development and validation of the Attribution of Mental States Questionnaire (AMS-Q): A reference tool for assessing anthropomorphism

et al. 2023

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“…Understanding that someone can intentionally lie is part of Theory of Mind (ToM). For example, Peretti et al (2023) examined whether 5‐ and 6‐year‐olds could differentiate between intentionally and unintentionally false statements that were made by a human and a humanoid robot. Children were less critical of the lies of a robot compared to those of a human.…”

Section: Children's Anthropomorphism Of Inanimate Agentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children's anthropomorphism of inanimate agents

Goldman,

Poulin‐Dubois

2024

WIRES Cognitive Science

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This review article examines the extant literature on animism and anthropomorphism in infants and young children. A substantial body of work indicates that both infants and young children have a broad concept of what constitutes a sentient agent and react to inanimate objects as they do to people in the same context. The literature has also revealed a developmental pattern in which anthropomorphism decreases with age, but social robots appear to be an exception to this pattern. Additionally, the review shows that children attribute psychological properties to social robots less so than people but still anthropomorphize them. Importantly, some research suggests that anthropomorphism of social robots is dependent upon their morphology and human‐like behaviors. The extent to which children anthropomorphize robots is dependent on their exposure to them and the presence of human‐like features. Based on the existing literature, we conclude that in infancy, a large range of inanimate objects (e.g., boxes, geometric figures) that display animate motion patterns trigger the same behaviors observed in child‐adult interactions, suggesting some implicit form of anthropomorphism. The review concludes that additional research is needed to understand what infants and children judge as social agents and how the perception of inanimate agents changes over the lifespan. As exposure to robots and virtual assistants increases, future research must focus on better understanding the full impact that regular interactions with such partners will have on children's anthropomorphizing.This article is categorized under: Psychology > Learning Cognitive Biology > Cognitive Development Computer Science and Robotics > Robotics

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“…Understanding that someone can intentionally lie is part of Theory of Mind (ToM). For example, Peretti et al (2023) examined whether 5-and 6-year-olds could differentiate between intentionally and unintentionally false statements that were made by a human and a humanoid robot. Children were less critical of the lies of a robot compared to those of a human.…”

Section: Mental Statesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children's anthropomorphism of inanimate agents

Goldman¹,

Poulin‐Dubois²

2023

Preprint

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This review paper examines the extant literature on animism and anthropomorphism in infants and young children. A substantial body of work indicates that both infants and young children have a broad concept of what constitutes a sentient agent and react to inanimate objects as they do to people in the same situations. The literature has also revealed a developmental pattern in which animism decreases with age, but social robots appear to be an exception to this pattern. Additionally, the review shows that children attribute psychological properties to social robots less so than people but still anthropomorphize them. Importantly, anthropomorphizing of social robots is dependent upon their morphology and human-like behaviors. The extent to which children anthropomorphize robots is dependent on their exposure to them and the presence of human-like features. Based on the existing literature, we conclude that in infancy, a large range of inanimate objects (e.g., boxes, geometric figures) that display animate motion patterns trigger the same behaviors observed in child-adult interactions. The review concludes that additional research is needed to understand what infants and children judge as social agents and how the perception of inanimate agents changes over the lifespan. As exposure to robots and virtual assistants increases, future research must focus to better understand the full impact that regular interactions with such partners will have on children’s anthropomorphizing.

show abstract

Can a robot lie? Young children's understanding of intentionality beneath false statements

Cited by 10 publications

References 110 publications

Development and validation of the Attribution of Mental States Questionnaire (AMS-Q): A reference tool for assessing anthropomorphism

Development and validation of the Attribution of Mental States Questionnaire (AMS-Q): A reference tool for assessing anthropomorphism

Children's anthropomorphism of inanimate agents

Children's anthropomorphism of inanimate agents

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