A robot’s efficient demonstration cannot reduce 5- to 6-year-old children’s over-imitation

Abstract

Children tend to imitate inefficient behaviors containing causally irrelevant actions—they over-imitate. Out-group members’ efficient demonstration cannot reduce children’s over-imitation of in-group members, due to their interpretation of irrelevant actions as norms which in-group members should follow. Children may perceive robots as culture-specific behavior transmitters since they also over-imitate robots. This study explores whether a robot’s efficient demonstration can reduce 5- to 6-year-old children’s over-imitation. In Experiment 1, most of 64 children imitated a human’s irrelevant actions in Phase 1, then reduced over-imitation after watching an efficient demonstration modeled by a robot or a human in Phase 2, but the rate of over-imitation decreased more when the model was a human. In Experiment 2, 64 children only had one chance to imitate after watching two demonstrations (an efficient one demonstrated by a human and an inefficient one demonstrated by a robot or another human), the over-imitation occurred more when the efficient model was a robot than a human. Compared with over-imitation rate of Phase 1 in Experiment 1, that was significantly decreased only when the efficient model was a human. The results indicate that children don’t perceive robots as social learning models, at least in the presence of alternative human models.