Identification of agency on interacting with compuetr and attribution of humanlikeness

Abstract

Agency identification has been one of fundamental issue of Human-Agent Interaction studies. We carried out two experiments to examine what sort of behavior does make human identify the agency. And In order to examine agency identification, there was equipped an experimental environment for observing how people interpret other's behavior. The experimental environment which physically provided the interaction between human and computer was a media system that connects two sides of the experimental environment through the computer network. Therefore two persons can interact each other by using the own side's experimental environment that they can only touch and change color of the grid described to the screen. The task of experiment required participants to discriminate the other party if it was a human or a computer when they played the system. In this study, we regard attribution of humanlikeness toward other's behaviors as a sign of agency identification. The result of experiments showed that people can attributed humanlikeness toward other's behaviors when their actions were synchronized with other's actions such as rhythmical pattern and relation of spacial pattern. This result suggests that human agency identification is induced by interaction between the target entity and his/herself. © 2013 JSAI.