Poster #103 - Does behavioral synchrony affect children’s sharing, mentalizing, and social attributions to social robots?

• In Event: Poster Session 10

Abstract

Behavioral synchrony, or the act of moving in time with others, is linked to a broad range of positive social cognitive and moral outcomes (e.g., empathy, perspective taking, prosociality). Yet, it is unclear whether synchrony effects are (1) limited to synchronous movements with human partners, (2) applied more broadly to social agents, including social robots, or (3) applied to any synchronous entity, such as a mechanical device. Thus, the current study investigates whether synchrony effects are evidenced in children’s interactions with people, social robots, or metronomes. Participants (N=120 planned; 5-8 years) were randomly assigned to condition (human, robot, or metronome; Figure 1) and introduced to the clapping game with two practice trials clapping along with the researcher to an auditory beat. Test trials were presented via video on an iPad of their two clapping partners based on condition. Test trials consisted of two rounds of the clapping game with their two partners – one synchronous and the other asynchronous (order counterbalanced) – with each round consisting of four clapping trials. Participants were instructed to clap along to the sound they heard, noting that their partner may be clapping to the same or a different sound. After the first round of the clapping game, participants were administered a Mental Other Scale (Kahn et al., 2012; Girouard-Hallam, Streble, & Danovitch, 2021) and a Social Other Scale (Birch et al., 2020; Kahn et al., 2012; Severson & Lemm, 2016) to assess the child’s attribution of mental states and sociality to their clapping partner. This procedure was repeated for the second round with the other partner. Following both rounds of the clapping game, participants completed a resource allocation task in which they distributed seven stickers between the two partners. The use of an odd number of stickers forced participants to decide between the synchronous or asynchronous partner. Finally, as a manipulation check, participants were asked to identify which partner clapped to a different sound than the child during the clapping game. Additionally, a coder blind to condition and synchronous/asynchronous round coded whether participants clapped correctly in time with the sound they heard. Individual differences were assessed for anthropomorphism (Individual Differences in Anthropomorphism Questionnaire-Child Form; Severson & Lemm, 2016), theory of mind (Children’s Social Understanding Scale; Tahiroglu et al., 2014), and social preferences (Children’s Social Preference Scale; Coplan et al., 2004). Linear mixed models were used to assess differences on both the Mental Other and Social Other scales between synchronous and asynchronous partners (repeated measure) across entity condition (fixed effect). Multiple regression was used to test for differences in sticker sharing between synchronous and asynchronous partners across entity condition. Sequential analyses assessed the influence of the individual differences measures on each of the outcome variable models. Results from this study address whether and to what extent synchrony effects manifest in children’s preferential sharing, mentalizing, and social ascriptions to technologies and inform on theoretical questions regarding the pervasiveness of behavioral synchrony effect.

Authors

• Sarah Sweezy, University of Montana
  Presenting Author

• Tom Macko, University of Montana

• Rachel L. Severson, University of Montana