Study on mindreading mechanism in robot, nonhuman primates and human.

本研究对心智系统的作用机制进行了研究。我们将认知发展机器人的观点添加到比较认知科学中，在比较认知科学中，受试者通常是人类和非人类灵长类动物或其他动物。首先，我们重点研究了人类婴儿、成人和黑猩猩的视觉注意转移。在计算机屏幕或卡板上呈现指示线索，如人脸线条、人脸照片，并观察受试者的眼动。我们发现，即使是人类的婴儿和黑猩猩也会像成人一样表现出自动的注意力转移。我们认为，这种基本机制的基础是联合视觉注意，即更高层次的社会认知能力。我们还使用“箭头”作为指示刺激，发现它对视觉注意力转移非常有效。我们假设非对称性刺激在注意转移中有效，并进行了实验。非对称刺激似乎能有效地诱导视觉注意转移。这是合理的，因为眼睛的运动或人脸的方向是不对称的。在仿人机器人中，我们进行了模仿人类行为的实验，我们从理解他人知识的角度进行了实验。参与者分别是3、4、5和6岁的儿童。通常情况下，3岁的孩子无法理解看到和知道之间的联系。然而，我们发现，通过观察实验者之间的互动，即使是3岁的孩子也能理解通过互动获得知识的人。

In this research project, mechanism of mindreading system was investigated. We added the perspective of cognitive developmental robotics to comparative cognitive science in which usually the subjects were human and nonhuman primates or other animal. At first, we focused on visual attention shift in human infants, human adults, and chimpanzees. The deictic cue such as face like line drawing, photograph of face, was presented on the computer screen or card board and subjects' eye movement was observed. We found that even human infants and chimpanzees showed automatically attention shift as well as human adults. We concluded this kind of basic mechanism underlie in joint visual attention, that is higher order social cognitive ability. We also used "an arrow" as a deictic stimulus, and found it is very effective for visual attention shift. We had an hypothesis that asymmetry stimulus is effective in attention shift, and carried out the experiment. Asymmetry stimuli were seemed to be effective to induce visual attention shift. That is reasonable, because eye movement or orientation of human face are asymmetry. In humanoid robot, we conducted the experiment for imitation of human action.We carried out the experiments from the point of view of understanding of other's knowledge. Participants were 3, 4, 5, and 6-year-olds. Usually 3-year-olds cannot understand the association between seeing and knowing. However, we found that even 3-year-olds understand the person who have a knowledge acquired through the interaction by observing interaction between the experimenters.