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In Study, Babies Think A Silvery Robot Is Human, As Long As It Acts Friendly

Morphy the robot is a friendly enough chap, once you get to know him (it?). How do I know? Well, I asked an 18-month old.

Kinda.

Babies would sit on their parents' laps and engage in a skit with a robot, where the robot would do things like point and ask, "Where is your head?" The babies followed the movements with their eyes and then, when the skit was over, would also follow the robot as it looked at a nearby toy.

Babies not exposed to the "getting acquainted"-type skit did not follow the robot's gaze as often. However, we are only talking about a difference between three out of sixteen versus thirteen out of sixteen infants. Clearly, this isn't much of a sample size.

And, the other thing that militates against this being a perfectly controlled experiment is the presence of the child's parent during both the skit (if applicable) and the toy-gazing. It makes me wonder whether there is any issue like with Clever Hans, e. g. some form of involuntary and anonymous cuing being done by the parents.

I am not suggesting that such young infants be left alone but the circumstances do give me pause in terms of whether there is any good way of testing such young children.

For more information, see the October 14, 2010 edition of PopSci.

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