Social Brains Meet Robots Perspectives on Using Artificial Agents for Investigating Social and Observational Learning in Humans and Monkeys
Neda Shahidi, Ricarda Bothe, René Burghardt, and 8 more authors
Nov 2024
Understanding social interactions in human and non-human primates is an actively investigated research topic in psychology, primatology, cognitive-, and neuroscience. Experimental investigations of such interactions could benefit from using human-like artificial agents as they promise a higher degree of control while partially preserving ecological validity. We discuss the potential of artificial agents for studying the aforementioned fields through the lenses of social and observational learning research. We highlight examples of experimental approaches for children and monkeys and share our perspective on various features of artificial agents that are potentially relevant to building novel experimental paradigms for humans and monkeys. Finally, we discuss an intuitive technique for designing artificial agents for experimental behavioral tasks.