Papers about Psychology

The notion that a computer can decode brain signals to infer the intentions of a human and then enact those intentions directly through a machine is becoming a realistic technical possibility. These types of devices are known as brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). The evolution of these neuroprosthetic technologies could have significant implications for patients with motor disabilities by enhancing their ability to interact and communicate with their environment. The cortical physiology most investigated and used for... Read more

This paper presents the results of a field study of the COHIBIT museum exhibit. Its purpose is to convey knowledge about car-technology and virtual characters in an entertaining way. Two life-sized virtual characters interact with the visitors and support them in constructing car models with specific tangible car modules. The evaluation should reveal what makes the exhibit successful in terms of an overall user impression and how users rate the employed virtual characters. The focus... Read more

In face-to-face dialogue, the participants have visible as well as audible resources for social communication, that is, not just words and prosody, but also hand gestures, facial displays, gaze direction and timing, body orientation, and objects in their shared environment. We propose that some non-verbal acts play an important role in the participants' collaboration, so that the study ofthese non-verbal acts in dialogue is a promising way to understand basic processes in social communication. Read more

In this paper, we present some initial thoughts on the occurrence of verbal abuse in human-chatterbot interaction within the framework of social-cognition. This thinking is an important step towards the understanding of virtual relationships and the design of socially adept technology. Read more

Chatterbots are computer programs that simulate intelligent conversation. They are situated between games and toys, as their aim is mostly to be entertaining, but the user doesn't have to follow precise rules when playing with the program. Currently business and educational applications have started to emerge as a further development of the idea of intelligent dialog. For the game industry, they come close to the concept of NPC, or Non-Player Character, and they may become... Read more

I claim that achieving real human-level artificial intelligence would necessarily imply that most of the tasks that humans perform for pay could be automated. Rather than work toward this goal of automation by building special-purpose systems, I argue for the development of general-purpose, educable systems that can learn and be taught to perform any of the thousands of jobs that humans can perform. Joining others who have made similar proposals, I advocate beginning with a... Read more

"Narrative" is one of key words in the modern society. Giddens pointed out a central role of narratives of the self in some literatures on self-actualization in the late modern society. Kobayashi claimed that there are increasing people trying to write life histories of themselves, and industries aiming at satisfying demand of these people like manuals for making narratives of selves, publishers, and so on, called "narrative industries", have appeared. There is a possibility that... Read more

Imagine a future world where humans and machines will be involved in joint activities requiring social skills. This paper presents an overview of the dawnings of this world, concentrating on chatterbots – computer programs which engage the user in written conversation – and their users. Driving upon Clark’s theory of Language and the psychological theory of self-categorisation by Turner, it presents an analysis of social reactions to chatterbots and a taxonomy of the technology. The... Read more

We propose an answer to the “What is AI?” question, namely, that AI is really (or at least really ought in significant part to be) Psychometric AI (PAI). Along the way, we: set out and rebut five objections to PAI; describe PERI, a robot in our lab who exemplifies PAI; and briefly treat the future of Psychometric AI, first by pointing toward some promising AI-based applications, and then by raising some of the “big” philosophical... Read more

Demand for conversational interfaces is great and growing, especially for online commercial applications. Creating such interfaces so that the information is provided is accurate, believable and trusted is a complex engineering task. Various studies into how users react socially to an interface have shown that it is possible to improve the usability and general attraction of an interface by carefully implementing an appropriate personality. These findings are taken and applied to a true, reactive, real... Read more