Closing the loop in minimally supervised human-robot interaction: formative and summative feedback

Human instructors fluidly communicate with hand gestures, head and body movements, and facial expressions, but robots rarely leverage these complementary cues. A minimally supervised social robot with such skills could help people exercise and learn new activities. Thus, we investigated how nonverbal feedback from a humanoid robot affects human behavior. Inspired by the education literature, we evaluated formative feedback (real-time corrections) and summative feedback (post-task scores) for three distinct tasks: positioning in the room, mimicking the robot's arm pose, and contacting the robot's hands. Twenty-eight adults completed seventy-five 30-s-long trials with no explicit instructions or experimenter help. Motion-capture data analysis shows that both formative and summative feedback from the robot significantly aided user performance. Additionally, formative feedback improved task understanding. These results show the power of nonverbal cues based on human movement and the utility of viewing feedback through formative and summative lenses.

No evidence for adult smartphone use affecting attribution of communicative intention in toddlers: Online imitation study using the Sock Ball Task

Adults infer others' communicative intentions, or lack thereof, from various types of information. Young children may be initially limited to attributions based on a small set of ostensive signals. It is unknown when richer pragmatic inferences about communicative intentions emerge in development. We sought novel type of evidence for such inferences in 17-to-19-month-olds. We hypothesized that toddlers recognize adults' smartphone use in face-to-face interactions as incongruous with ostension and would rely on this interpretation when inferring the communicative intention of a model in a new imitation task conducted entirely online, dubbed the Sock Ball Task. In Experiment 1 with a between-subject design, we tested the hypothesis by assessing toddlers' (N = 48) imitation of sub-efficient means and the goal-outcome presented by a model, who interrupted her ostensive demonstration either by using a smartphone or by fiddling with her wristwatch, depending on the condition. We expected toddlers to imitate the sub-efficient means more faithfully in the wristwatch condition than in the smartphone condition. But there was no significant effect of condition on imitation of neither means nor goal. Thus, our hypothesis was not borne out by the results. In Experiment 2, using a within-subject design, we first assessed toddlers' (N = 24) performance in a no-demonstration baseline and then again after a no-disruption ostensive demonstration. In all three conditions with ostensive demonstration (Experiment 1: smartphone, wristwatch; Experiment 2: no-disruption), toddlers produced the demonstrated sub-efficient means significantly above the baseline level. In the no-disruption condition, goals were also imitated significantly above the baseline level. We conclude that the Sock Ball Task is a valid research tool for studying toddler imitation of novel means actions with objects. We end by discussing suggestions for improving the task in future studies.

The Icing on the Cake. Or Is it Frosting? The Influence of Group Membership on Children's Lexical Choices

Adults are skilled at using language to construct/negotiate identity and to signal affiliation with others, but little is known about how these abilities develop in children. Clearly, children mirror statistical patterns in their local environment (e.g., Canadian children using zed instead of zee), but do they flexibly adapt their linguistic choices on the fly in response to the choices of different peers? To address this question, we examined the effect of group membership on 7- to 9-year-olds' labeling of objects in a trivia game, exploring whether they were more likely to use a particular label (e.g., sofa vs. couch) if members of their "team" also used that label. In a preregistered study, children (N = 72) were assigned to a team (red or green) and were asked during experimental trials to answer questions-which had multiple possible answers (e.g., blackboard or chalkboard)-after hearing two teammates and two opponents respond to the same question. Results showed that children were significantly more likely to produce labels less commonly used by the community (i.e., dispreferred labels) when their teammates had produced those labels. Crucially, this effect was tied to group membership, and could not be explained by children simply repeating the most recently used label. These findings demonstrate how social processes (i.e., group membership) can guide linguistic variation in children.

Automatic imitation in school-aged children

Children imitate others for different reasons: To learn from others and to reach social goals such as affiliation or prosociality. So far, imitative acts have been measured using diverging methods in children and adults. Here, we investigated whether school-aged children's imitation can be measured via their automatic imitation with a classical imitation-inhibition task (Brass et al., 2000) as has been used in adults. To this end, we measured automatic imitation in N=94 7-8-year-olds and N=10 adults. The results were similar in children and adults: Observing actions that are incongruent with participants' actions interferes with their responses resulting in increased reaction times and error rates. This shows that assessing automatic imitation via the imitation-inhibition task is feasible in children, and creates the basis for future studies to compare the behaviour of different age groups with the same imitation task.

Children's affiliation toward peers reflected in their picture drawings

Previous studies have demonstrated that a picture-drawing task can be an indicator of the affiliation children have with their peers. When a child draws himself/herself along with a peer, the distance between them is assumed to represent the extent of the affiliation held by the child toward the peer: the shorter the distance is, the more affiliation the child has. However, some issues remain before the picture-drawing task is established as a way to measure children's affiliation, including the possibility that the instructions might bias the children's responses (Thomas & Gray, 1992), and inconsistency over where to measure in the children's drawings (e.g., Song et al., 2015). In this study, we focused on the above two issues and addressed whether the picture-drawing task can be used for measuring children's affiliation toward peers. We conducted our study in Japanese nursery schools with 3- to 6-year-old children (N = 676), who drew pictures of themselves and a classmate. Teachers rated how much the children had played with the drawn peer. We found that the more a child had an affiliative relationship with a peer, the shorter the distance between the drawn child and peer was when measuring the closest points and the center between the two drawn figures. Our research sheds light on the validity of the picture-drawing task for measuring children's affiliation.

Young children use imitation communicatively

There is growing evidence that children imitate not just to learn from others but also to affiliate socially with them. However, although imitation can convey a wealth of affiliative information to others, it is not yet known whether imitators intend for this to be the case. In particular, we do not know whether children imitate communicatively in some contexts, expending extra effort to make sure that the demonstrator sees their imitation. Here, in two experiments (N = 20 and N = 48, respectively), we tested whether preschool-age children modify their imitation when needed to ensure that the demonstrator sees it. In each trial, children were shown a demonstration. Then, for their response, in one condition a barrier obscured the demonstrator's view of children's imitation unless children raised their arms above the barrier while imitating. In the other condition the demonstrator was able to see children's imitation without any additional effort from children. Results from both experiments showed that children were significantly more likely to imitate with their arms raised when their actions would otherwise be obscured from view. In the second experiment, we also coded for other communicative behaviors (e.g., social smiles, eye contact, showing gestures) and found that children often displayed communicative behaviors while imitating, as expected, in both conditions. Thus, young children actively use imitation communicatively in some contexts.

Interpersonal utility and children's social inferences from shared preferences

Similarity of behaviors or attributes is often used to infer social affiliation and prosociality. Does this reflect reasoning using a simple expectation of homophily, or more complex reasoning about shared utility? We addressed this question by examining the inferences children make from similar choices when this similarity does or does not cause competition over a zero-sum resource. Four- to six-year-olds (N = 204) saw two vignettes, each featuring three characters (a target plus two others) choosing between two types of resources. In all stories, each character expressed a preference: one 'other' chose the same resource as the target, while a second 'other' chose the different resource. In one condition there were enough resources for all the characters; in the other condition, one type of resource was limited, with only one available (inducing potential competition between the target and the similar-choice other). Children then judged which of the two 'other' characters was being nicer (prosocial judgment) and which of the two was more preferred by the target (affiliative inference). When resources were limited (vs. unlimited), children were less likely to select the similar other as being nice. Children's initial tendency to report that the target preferred the similar other was also eliminated in the limited resource scenario. These findings show that children's reasoning about similarity is not wholly based on homophily. Instead, by reasoning about shared utility - how each person values the goals of others - children engage in flexible inferences regarding whether others' similar preferences and behaviors have positive or negative social meaning.

The ontogenetic emergence of normativity: How action imitation relates to infants' norm enforcement

Major developmental theories allot imitation a pivotal role in the cultural acquisition of social norms. Although there exists considerable evidence of young children's norm enforcement behavior, the ontogenetic emergence of normativity and the role of imitation is debated. Here, we assessed two pathways of how general imitation tendencies might relate to norm enforcement: The compliance path holds that young children's general imitation tendencies lead to displaying compliant behavior, which in turn predicts norm enforcement toward third parties. The internalization path suggests that young children's general imitation tendencies lead to an internal representation of normative rules. As children observe third parties' normative transgressions, a perceived discrepancy between internalized representation of the rule and observed behavior arises, which in turn triggers corrective action, that is, norm enforcement behavior. We assessed 18-month-olds' (N = 97) general imitation tendencies across four tasks, their compliance with maternal directives across two tasks, and their self-distress as well as protest behavior following normative transgressions. Results showed that (a) whereas imitation significantly predicted compliance behavior, compliance did not predict norm enforcement behavior, and that (b) imitation predicted self-distress, which in turn predicted norm enforcement. These findings speak to internalization as one psychological basis of norm enforcement behavior and highlight the importance of imitation in the ontogenetic emergence of normativity.

Does the threat of COVID-19 modulate automatic imitation?

The tendency to involuntarily imitate the actions of others (automatic imitation) can be modulated by social affiliative cues. Here, we explored whether the disruption to our social lives caused by the COVID-19 pandemic may subsequently influence automatic imitation. Three groups were initially presented a sentence comprehension task that featured either neutral (control), safe or unsafe primes to COVID-19 infection. They then completed an automatic imitation task, where a numeric cue was presented alongside apparent motion of an index or middle finger, which was either compatible or incompatible with the required response. Reaction times were longer for the incompatible compared to compatible trials, and thus demonstrated automatic imitation. However, there was no influence of the primes indicating that automatic imitation was unaffected by the risk of COVID-19. The potential theoretical explanations and practical implications of pathogen avoidance and social bonding incentives are discussed with reference to pandemic events.

Mother-infant co-regulation from 0 to 2 years: The role of copy behaviors. A systematic review

The purpose of this review was twofold: (1) to examine how copy behaviors (CB) have been studied in mother-infant natural interactions from 0 to 24 months, and (2) to determine to what extent they can be considered co-regulation processes between both members of the dyad. To do this, 36 studies published between 1975 and 2021 were systematically examined, classified and discussed. The analyzed evidence showed that CB in spontaneous mother-infant interactions have been examined under different perspectives, that such behaviors might be differentially classified as distinct modes of copying according to their traits and, lastly, that CB operate as social facilitators that foster the co-regulation of both affects and behaviors and direct mothers and infants, most of the times, towards a mutual sense of interpersonal matching that adds quality to their interactions.

Adopted Utility Calculus: Origins of a Concept of Social Affiliation

To successfully navigate their social world, humans need to understand and map enduring relationships between people: Humans need a concept of social affiliation. Here I propose that the initial concept of social affiliation, available in infancy, is based on the extent to which one individual consistently takes on the goals and needs of another. This proposal grounds affiliation in intuitive psychology, as formalized in the naive-utility-calculus model. A concept of affiliation based on interpersonal utility adoption can account for findings from studies of infants' reasoning about imitation, similarity, helpful and fair individuals, "ritual" behaviors, and social groups without the need for additional innate mechanisms such as a coalitional psychology, moral sense, or general preference for similar others. I identify further tests of this proposal and also discuss how it is likely to be relevant to social reasoning and learning across the life span.

The ontogeny of selective social learning: Young children flexibly adopt majority- or payoff-based biases depending on task uncertainty

Humans have adapted well to diverse environments in part because of their ability to efficiently acquire information from their social environment. However, we still know very little as to how young children acquire cultural knowledge and in particular the circumstances under which children prioritize social learning over asocial learning. In this study, we asked whether children will selectively adopt either a majority-biased or payoff-biased social learning strategy in the presence or absence of asocial learning. The 3- to 5-year-olds (N = 117) were first shown a video in which four other children took turns in retrieving a capsule housing a reward from one of two boxes. Three of the children (the "majority") retrieved a capsule from the same box, and a single individual (the "minority") retrieved a capsule from the alternative box. Across four conditions, we manipulated both the value of the rewards available in each box (equal or unequal payoff) and whether children had knowledge of the payoff before making their own selection. Results show that children adopted a majority-biased learning strategy when they were unaware of the value of the rewards available but adopted a payoff-biased strategy when the payoff was known to be unequal. We conclude that children are strategic social learners who integrate both social and asocial learning to maximize personal gain.

Learning versus reasoning to use tools in children

Tool behavior might be based on two strategies associated with specific cognitive mechanisms: cued-learning and technical-reasoning strategies. We aimed to explore whether these strategies coexist in young children and whether they are manifest differently through development. We presented 216 3- to 9-year-olds with a vertical maze task consisting in moving a ball from the top to the bottom of a maze. Two tool-use/mechanical actions were possible: rotating action and sliding action. Three conditions were tested, each focused on a different strategy. In the Opaque-Cue condition (cued-learning strategy), children could not see the mechanical action of each tool. Nevertheless, a cue was provided according to the tool needed to solve the problem. In the Transparent-No Cue condition (technical-reasoning strategy), no cue was presented. However, children could see the mechanical actions associated with each tool. In the Transparent-Cue condition (cued-learning and/or technical-reasoning strategies) children saw both the mechanical actions and the cues. Results indicated that the Opaque-Cue and Transparent-Cue conditions were easier than the Transparent-No-Cue condition in all children. These findings stress that children can use either cued learning or technical reasoning to use tools, according to the available information. The behavioral pattern observed in the Transparent-Cue condition suggests that children might be inclined to use technical reasoning even when the task can be solved through cued learning.

Personality predicts innovation and social learning in children: Implications for cultural evolution

Innovation and social learning are the pillars of cultural evolution, allowing cultural behaviours to cumulatively advance over generations. Yet, little is known about individual differences in the use of social and asocial information. We examined whether personality influenced 7-11-year-old children's (N = 282) propensity to elect to observe others first or independently generate solutions to novel problems. Conscientiousness was associated with electing for no demonstrations, while agreeableness was associated with opting for demonstrations. For children receiving demonstrations, openness to experience consistently predicted deviation from observed methods. Children who opted for no demonstrations were also more likely than those opting for demonstrations to exhibit tool manufacture on an innovation challenge and displayed higher creativity, as measured by an alternate uses task. These results highlight how new cultural traditions emerge, establish and advance by identifying which individuals generate new cultural variants in populations and which are influential in the diffusion of these variants, and help reduce the apparent tension within the 'ratchet' of cumulative culture.

Social learning from media: The need for a culturally diachronic developmental psychology

Since the proliferation of television sets into households began over half a century ago there has been widespread interest in the impact that viewing has on young children's development. Such interest has grown with the increasing availability of smart phones and tablets. In this review we examine the literature documenting human social learning and how this learning is impacted when the instructing agent appears on a screen instead of face-to-face. We then explore the shifting nature of screen-based media, with a focus on the increasingly socio-normative manner information is portrayed. We discuss how the changing nature of screen technology might be altering how children interpret what they see, and raise the possibility that this may render prevailing evidence as historical documentation, rather than setting out established developmental milestones that transcend the period in which they were documented. We contend that recognizing the significance of historically changing contexts in developmental psychology is timely when the COVID-19 climate is pushing data collection on-line for many labs, often using tasks that were developed primarily for face-to-face contexts.

Enhancing same-gender imitation by highlighting gender norms in Chinese pre-school children

Children selectively imitate in-group over outgroup individuals under certain experimental conditions. We investigated whether this bias applies to gender in-groups in China. Three- and five-year-olds were shown how to operate novel objects by same-gender and opposite-gender models. Results indicate that the combination of verbally highlighting the gender identity of the model (e.g., 'I am a girl') and making gender norms explicit (e.g., 'girls play this way') significantly enhances high-fidelity imitation. This 'double social effect' was more robust in 5-year-olds than 3-year-olds. Our results underscore how language about gender and the norms for gender-based groups influence behavioural imitation. The pattern of findings enhances our knowledge about pre-schoolers' social learning and imitation as well as the powerful influence of language and group norms on children's voluntary actions and learning.