A team at the Istituto Italiano Di Tecnologia (IIT) in Genoa have shown how a robot's gaze can trick us into thinking we are socially interacting and slow our ability to make decisions. "Gaze is an extremely important social signal that we employ on a day-to-day basis when interacting with others," said Professor Agnieszka Wykowska, lead author of the research, published on Wednesday in the journal Science Robots. "The question is whether the robot gaze will evoke very similar mechanisms in the human brain as another human's gaze would." Between rounds players had to look at the robot, which would sometimes look back and other times look away. "The mutual gaze of the robot affected decisions by delaying them, so humans were much slower in making the decisions in the game."

Source: bd News24 September 01, 2021 18:00 UTC