The Influence of Behavioral Synchrony on Children’s Sharing, Mentalizing, and Social Attributions to People and Social Robots

Authors' Names

Sarah E. Sweezy, University of MontanaFollow

Presentation Type

Oral Presentation

Category

Social Sciences/Humanities

Abstract/Artist Statement

Behavioral synchrony, or the act of moving in time with others, is linked to a broad range of positive social cognitive and moral outcomes (e.g., empathy, perspective-taking, prosociality). Although behavioral synchrony has demonstrated such positive outcomes for children, there is little known about how synchronizing with others will influence children’s tendency to attribute mental states or sociality. Yet, it is unclear whether synchrony effects are (1) limited to synchronous movements with human partners, (2) applied more broadly to social agents, including social robots, or (3) applied to any synchronous entity, such as a mechanical device. The current study investigated how participating in synchronous and asynchronous action with either humans, social robots, or metronomes influenced how children attributed mental and social capacities and shared stickers with partners. Participants (n = 86; 5-8-year-olds) played a clapping game twice, once with a synchronous partner and once with an asynchronous partner (order counterbalanced). After each test trial (clapping game), participants responded to a Mental Other Scale (Kahn et al., 2012; Girouard-Hallam, Streble, & Danovitch, 2021) and a Social Other Scale (Birch et al., 2020; Kahn et al., 2012; Severson & Lemm, 2016) for the partner they had just played the game with. After both test trials, participants completed a resource allocation task with seven stickers to allocate to the two partners, where the use of an odd number of stickers forced a decision between giving more stickers to the synchronous or asynchronous partner. Results from this study address whether and to what extent synchrony effects manifest in children’s preferential sharing, mentalizing, and social ascriptions to technologies and inform on theoretical questions regarding the pervasiveness of behavioral synchrony effect.

Mentor Name

Rachel Severson

Personal Statement

By designing the study, collecting data, and analyzing the data I have gained valuable skills equipping me to be a better scientist and scholar. The study has been conducted in the UM Living Lab, located in the Missoula Public Library, where I have engaged with hundreds of children and families about child development and this study, providing meaningful opportunities for children in Missoula and surrounding communities to engage with science role models. Such engagement with science role models, especially for children who don't typically have these opportunities, can be profoundly transformational, increasing interest in science and creating on-ramps for higher education. Additionally, communicating about developmental science to families and findings from our studies has benefited me professionally by learning to disseminate scientific findings and broaden my science communication skills in a meaningful way. Studying child-robot interactions is important because as these technologies are rapidly developing, they are overwhelmingly targeted towards children from uses in the education, home, and clinical settings. Additionally, it is important to understand how children are evaluating the mental and social capacities that robots may have, as they are being designed to be increasingly anthropomorphic in appearance and behavior. Specifically studying the influence of behavioral synchrony on children’s perceptions has important implications directly. For example, some classrooms integrate movement-based activities that encourage synchronization, such as dancing. As classrooms become equipped with more technologies, including some already utilizing educational social robots, it is likely that robots could facilitate dancing or games that require synchrony. Thus, the current study provides important information for understanding how children’s social cognitive capacities may influence their reasoning and ascriptions to these technologies and can also inform the design of technologies intended for movement-based interactions.