Cultural Difference in Back-Imitation’s Effect on the Perception of Robot’s Imitative Performance

Cultural differences have been documented in different aspects of perception of robots as well as understanding of their behavior. A different line of research in developmental psychology has established a major role for imitation in skill transfer and emergence of culture. This study is a preliminary cross–cultural exploration of the effect of imitating the robot (back imitation) on human’s perception of robot’s imitative skill. In previous research, we have shown that engagement in back imitation with a NAO humanoid robot, results in increased perception of robot’s imitative skill, human–likeness of motion, and willingness of future interaction with the robot. This previous work mostly used Japanese university students. In this paper, we report the results of conducting the same study with subjects of two cultures: Japanese and Egyptian university students. The first finding of the study is that the two cultures have widely different expectations of the robot and interaction with it and that some of these differences are significantly reduced after the interaction. The second finding is that Japanese students tended to attribute higher imitation skill and human likeness to the robot they imitated while Egyptian students did not show such tendency. The paper discusses these findings in light of known differences between the two cultures and analyzes the role of expectation in the differences found.