Browsing by Subject "Uncanny valley"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Creepy cats and strange high houses: Support for configural processing in testing predictions of nine uncanny valley theories
    (Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, 2021-04) Diel, Alexander; MacDorman, Karl F.; Human-Centered Computing, School of Informatics and Computing
    In 1970, Masahiro Mori proposed the uncanny valley (UV), a region in a human-likeness continuum where an entity risks eliciting a cold, eerie, repellent feeling. Recent studies have shown that this feeling can be elicited by entities modeled not only on humans but also nonhuman animals. The perceptual and cognitive mechanisms underlying the UV effect are not well understood, although many theories have been proposed to explain them. To test the predictions of nine classes of theories, a within-subjects experiment was conducted with 136 participants. The theories’ predictions were compared with ratings of 10 classes of stimuli on eeriness and coldness indices. One type of theory, configural processing, predicted eight out of nine significant effects. Atypicality, in its extended form, in which the uncanny valley effect is amplified by the stimulus appearing more human, also predicted eight. Threat avoidance predicted seven; atypicality, perceptual mismatch, and mismatch+ predicted six; category+, novelty avoidance, mate selection, and psychopathy avoidance predicted five; and category uncertainty predicted three. Empathy's main prediction was not supported. Given that the number of significant effects predicted depends partly on our choice of hypotheses, a detailed consideration of each result is advised. We do, however, note the methodological value of examining many competing theories in the same experiment.
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    Human Emotion and the Uncanny Valley: A Glm, Mds, and Isomap Analysis of Robot Video Ratings
    Ho, Chin-Chang; MacDorman, Karl F.
    The eerie feeling attributed to human-looking robots and animated characters may be a key factor in our perceptual and cognitive discrimination between the human and the merely humanlike. This study applies factor analysis, correlation, the generalized linear model (GLM), multidimensional scaling (MDS), and kernel isometric mapping (ISOMAP) to analyze ratings of 27 emotions of 16 moving figures whose appearance varies along a human likeness continuum. The results indicate (1) Attributions of eerie and creepy better capture human visceral reaction to an uncanny robot than strange. (2) Eeriness and creepiness are mainly associated with fear but also shocked, disgusted, and nervous. Strange and humanlike are less strongly associated with emotion. (3) Thus, strange and humanlike may be more cognitive, while eerie and creepy are more perceptual and emotional. (4) Human and facial features increase ratings of human likeness. (5) Women are slightly more sensitive to eerie and creepy than men; and older people may be more willing to attribute human likeness to a robot despite its eeriness.
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    Parental Acceptance of Children’s Storytelling Robots: A Projection of the Uncanny Valley of AI
    (Frontiers Media, 2021-05-19) Lin, Chaolan; Šabanović, Selma; Dombrowski, Lynn; Miller, Andrew D.; Brady, Erin; MacDorman, Karl F.; Human-Centered Computing, Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering
    Parent–child story time is an important ritual of contemporary parenting. Recently, robots with artificial intelligence (AI) have become common. Parental acceptance of children’s storytelling robots, however, has received scant attention. To address this, we conducted a qualitative study with 18 parents using the research technique design fiction. Overall, parents held mixed, though generally positive, attitudes toward children’s storytelling robots. In their estimation, these robots would outperform screen-based technologies for children’s story time. However, the robots’ potential to adapt and to express emotion caused some parents to feel ambivalent about the robots, which might hinder their adoption. We found three predictors of parental acceptance of these robots: context of use, perceived agency, and perceived intelligence. Parents’ speculation revealed an uncanny valley of AI: a nonlinear relation between the human likeness of the artificial agent’s mind and affinity for the agent. Finally, we consider the implications of children’s storytelling robots, including how they could enhance equity in children’s access to education, and propose directions for research on their design to benefit family well-being.
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    Too real for comfort? Uncanny responses to computer generated faces
    (ScienceDirect, 2014-12-12) MacDorman, Karl F.; Green, Robert D.; Ho, Chin-Chang; Koch, Clinton T.; Department of Human-Centered Computing, IU School of Informatics and Computing
    As virtual humans approach photorealistic perfection, they risk making real humans uncomfortable. This intriguing phenomenon, known as the uncanny valley, is well known but not well understood. In an effort to demystify the causes of the uncanny valley, this paper proposes several perceptual, cognitive, and social mechanisms that have already helped address riddles like empathy, mate selection, threat avoidance, cognitive dissonance, and psychological defenses. In the four studies described herein, a computer generated human character’s facial proportions, skin texture, and level of detail were varied to examine their effect on perceived eeriness, human likeness, and attractiveness. In Study I, texture photorealism and polygon count increased human likeness. In Study II, texture photorealism heightened the accuracy of human judgments of ideal facial proportions. In Study III, atypical facial proportions were shown to be more disturbing on photorealistic faces than on other faces. In Study IV, a mismatch in the size and texture of the eyes and face was especially prone to make a character eerie. These results contest the depiction of the uncanny valley as a simple relation between comfort level and human likeness. This paper concludes by introducing a set of design principles for bridging the uncanny valley.