L8: Imitation in social interaction part 2

Question 1

testing social cues: non-human agents

Answer 1

Similarly, if imitation is socially controlled, it should be reduced for agents that are incapable of being influenced, e.g., robotic agents
Press et al. (2005) sought to answer exactly this question.
In this study participants (n = 16) completed SRC trials in 4 stimulus conditions:
Human – Naturalistic
Human – Schematic (silhouette)
Robot – Naturalistic
Robot – Schematic
If STORM holds, we would expect:
That human trials should elicit larger imitation effects than robot trials (stimulus type)
That naturalistic trials should elicit larger imitation effects (stimulus style)
We may expect an interaction between agent and type effects, with human – naturalistic trials resulting in the largest imitation effects