The mind in the machine: mind perception modulates gaze aversion during child-robot interaction

This study examined whether interacting with a humanoid robot influences children’s gaze aversion, an effortless strategy that people commonly use to facilitate thinking when asked challenging questions. Following the intentional stance model, we hypothesized that interacting with agents perceived as having a mind would modulate the social relevance assigned by the children to their interlocutor. Accordingly, we expected to observe an increase in children’s gaze aversion rates when questioned by an interaction partner believed to have a mind, compared to interaction conditions in which the questioner was believed to be a machine. To test this hypothesis, we involved 94 children in two experiments. In Experiment 1, the children interacted either with a humanoid robot (Human–Robot; n = 22) or with a human (Human–Human; n = 22) questioner. In Experiment 2, all the children interacted with a humanoid robot: one group was told the robot was controlled by a human (Avatar; n = 25), while the other group was told the robot was controlled by a computer algorithm (Machine; n = 25). Our results show that: (1) adopting an intentional stance (Human–Human; Avatar) increases gaze aversion rates; (2) gaze aversion increases and (3) response accuracy decreases as a function of question difficulty; (4) accuracy does not differ between interaction conditions. Based on these findings, we propose that gaze aversion rates might be considered an objective behavioural indicator of mind perception. Implications for robot-mediated education are also discussed.