| People imagine about others all the time---imagining what others are thinking and feeling, their desires and hopes, their motivations and aims. Imagining another's perspective is an achievement in social cognition and underlies empathic concern and moral regard. Imagination is also within the realm of fantasy, and may take the form of imaginary play in children and imaginative production in adults. Interesting and provocative questions emerge in the case of personified robots: Will people conceive of robots as subjects with internal states and perceptual experiences? Will they consider a robot to be a friend or deserving of moral treatment? If so, are people's attributions based on their actual (thinking as) or pretend ( thinking as if) beliefs? Moreover, how does a robot compare to other entities, both natural and artifactual, in terms of people's conceptions and their engagement in pretense? This study sought to address these questions developmentally by investigating children's and young adults' attributions to a personified robot dinosaur ("Pleo") and whether their attributions represented their actual or pretend beliefs. Participants included 52 school-aged children (7 and 10 years) and 26 adult undergraduate students. Participants engaged in a 10-minute interaction period with the robot, followed by an interview focused on their conceptions of the robot and four comparison entities: dog, stuffed animal, tree, and computer. Results indicated, to varying degrees, children attributed perceptual capabilities, psychological states, sociality, and moral standing to the robot. Yet, they did not consider the robot to have biological characteristics. Adults were significantly less likely than children to make attributions to the robot. By and large, participants tended not to pretend when making attributions to the robot. While adults were significantly more likely than children to pretend when making attributions to the robot, this was largely accounted for by adults pretending the robot could be a friend. For children, the robot was most often situated in the middle between an animal and artifacts, whereas for adults the robot most frequently (though not exclusively) fell in line with artifacts. These results are considered in light of the proposition that personified robots represent the emergence of a new ontological category. Further discussion addresses the broader implications and future directions for this fascinating and emerging area of social cognition. |
