The Influence of Robot's Unexpected Behavior on Individual Cognitive Performance

Social robots have become pervasive in learning environments. The empirical understanding of how different individuals perceive and react to robot’s expressions has become an urgent necessity for the sustainable deployment. In this study, we examined whether robot’s unexpected actions affect individual cognitive performance. We have presented the experiment in which a robot could use unexpected visual or auditory stimuli and one’s reaction time in the Simon task was recorded for the investigation of the influence from the robot. Results have verified the idea that individual differences exist both in the perception of social robot’s expressions and the extent of change in the cognitive performance. This study provides insights into a richer application of human-robot interaction by taking individual differences regarding perception and response type into account, therefore constitutes a modest but significant step in the direction of adaptive human-robot interaction.