Analysing the effect of contingency in tutoring situations

In developmental research, tutoring behavior has been identified as scaffolding infants’ learning processes. It has been defined in terms of child-directed speech (Motherese), child-directed motion (Motionese), and contingency. Contingency describes situations in which two agents socially interact with each other and Csibra and Gergely showed that contingency is a char- acteristic aspect of social interaction [3]. In the field of developmental robotics, research often assumes that in human-robot interaction (HRI), robots are treated similar to infants, because their immature cognitive capabilities benefit from this behavior. Here we present results con- cerning the acceptance of a robotic agent in a social learning scenario obtained via comparison to adults and 8-11 months old infants in equal conditions. These results constitute an important empirical basis for making use of tutoring behavior in social robotics. Our results reveal significant differences between Adult-Child Interaction (ACI), Adult-Adult Interaction (AAI) and Adult-Robot Interaction (ARI) in eye gaze behavior suggesting that contingency is impaired in the analyzed ARI situation.