The Experts below are selected from a list of 420 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform
Alan R. Wagner - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Using Stereotypes to Understand One's Interactive Partner (Extended Abstract)
2020Co-Authors: Alan R. WagnerAbstract:Psychologists note that humans regularly use catego ries to simplify and speed the process of person perception [1]. The influence of Categorical Thinking on interpersonal expectations is commonly referred to as a stereotype. This research explores the construction and use of stereotypes in human-robot interaction. We present a novel algorithm that creates generaliz ed models of a robot’s interactive partner. The results of this wo rk have potential implications for social robotics, autonomous agents , and possibly psychology.
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IROS - Using cluster-based stereotyping to foster human-robot cooperation
2012 IEEE RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2012Co-Authors: Alan R. WagnerAbstract:Psychologists note that humans regularly use categories to simplify and speed up the process of person perception [1]. The influence of Categorical Thinking on interpersonal expectations is commonly referred to as a stereotype. The ability to bootstrap the process of learning about a newly encountered, unknown person is critical for robots interacting in complex and dynamic social situations. This article contributes a novel cluster-based algorithm that allows a robot to create generalized models of its interactive partner. These generalized models, or stereotypes, act as a source of information for predicting the human's behavior and preferences. We show, in simulation and using real robots, that these stereotyped models of the partner can be used to bootstrap the robot's learning about the partner in spite of significant error. The results of this work have potential implications for social robotics, autonomous agents, and possibly psychology.
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ICDL-EPIROB - The impact of stereotyping errors on a robot's social development
2012 IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and Epigenetic Robotics (ICDL), 2012Co-Authors: Alan R. WagnerAbstract:Psychologists note that social cognition often involves the creation, refinement, and use of models of one's interactive partners. The influence of Categorical Thinking on interpersonal expectations is commonly referred to as a stereotype. Using an algorithm that we created for stereotype learning, we investigate problems that can occur when the robot acquires its first models of people and learns its first stereotypes—the robot's early social development. We examine if the errors related to the creation of these initial models have a disproportionate impact on the robot's developing social skills, perhaps even reflecting some of the same challenges faced by humans [1]. We hypothesized that errors in which the robot interacted with someone that did not represent the true nature of a category, an outlier, would impact the robot's performance on a social coordination task more if the error occurred earlier in the robot's social development rather than later. Results from simulation confirmed our hypothesis. The results of this work have potential implications for social robotics, autonomous agents, and possibly psychology.
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Using cluster-based stereotyping to foster human-robot cooperation
2012 IEEE RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2012Co-Authors: Alan R. WagnerAbstract:Psychologists note that humans regularly use categories to simplify and speed up the process of person perception [1]. The influence of Categorical Thinking on interpersonal expectations is commonly referred to as a stereotype. The ability to bootstrap the process of learning about a newly encountered, unknown person is critical for robots interacting in complex and dynamic social situations. This article contributes a novel cluster-based algorithm that allows a robot to create generalized models of its interactive partner. These generalized models, or stereotypes, act as a source of information for predicting the human's behavior and preferences. We show, in simulation and using real robots, that these stereotyped models of the partner can be used to bootstrap the robot's learning about the partner in spite of significant error. The results of this work have potential implications for social robotics, autonomous agents, and possibly psychology.
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The impact of stereotyping errors on a robot's social development
2012 IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and Epigenetic Robotics (ICDL), 2012Co-Authors: Alan R. WagnerAbstract:Psychologists note that social cognition often involves the creation, refinement, and use of models of one's interactive partners. The influence of Categorical Thinking on interpersonal expectations is commonly referred to as a stereotype. Using an algorithm that we created for stereotype learning, we investigate problems that can occur when the robot acquires its first models of people and learns its first stereotypes-the robot's early social development. We examine if the errors related to the creation of these initial models have a disproportionate impact on the robot's developing social skills, perhaps even reflecting some of the same challenges faced by humans [1]. We hypothesized that errors in which the robot interacted with someone that did not represent the true nature of a category, an outlier, would impact the robot's performance on a social coordination task more if the error occurred earlier in the robot's social development rather than later. Results from simulation confirmed our hypothesis. The results of this work have potential implications for social robotics, autonomous agents, and possibly psychology.
C. Neil Macrae - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Another Peek Inside the Cognitive Toolbox: The Grapes of Roath
Psychological Inquiry, 2020Co-Authors: C. Neil MacraeAbstract:Overlooked gems can have surprising origins. It would be nice to report that our toolbox article (Macrae, Milne, & Bodenhausen, 1994) was the culmination of hours of intellectual debate, reasoned deliberation, and much head scratching (or in Milne's case-hair pulling). This, however, would not be true. Indeed, it would be something of an exaggeration to announce that as much as 45 min was spent considering the pertinent issues. Things just did not happen that way. The basic idea originated one Thursday evening in a wine bar in Roath, an area of Cardiff (Wales, United Kingdom) relatively near the university. Each week Alan Milne and myself would consume a few glasses of wine in the bar during happy hour. The purpose of the weekly meeting was supposedly to talk about research, but somehow we rarely achieved such a heady objective. For a reason that never became entirely clear, happy hour in the wine bar seemed to attract the Cardiff look-alike set. Thus, each week we would sample the grape and stare at Princess Diana, Clint Eastwood, and Cher. The result-it was very easy to get distracted. On one occasion, Milne was even asked to autograph a forehead. In such an environment, science inevitably suffers. When we did get around to talking about social cognition, our game plan was quite straightforward. Stop looking at Princess Diana, try to articulate a research problem as succinctly as possible, then generate an elegant means of investigating the issue under consideration. On one particular Thursday evening, our attention turned to the broad issue of Categorical Thinking and its impact on social-cognitive functioning (a topic that we entertained from time to time). Our interest centered on the function of Categorical Thinking. Put simply, what do we buy, cognitively speaking, by Thinking about others in a Categorical manner? Guiding our discussion and Thinking was previous work on the heuristic value of social stereotypes in judgment and decision making. To summarize this line of inquiry in a single sentence-when the information processing gets tough, stereotypes get going. Given this basic feature of social-cognitive functioning, we then had what can only be described as a moment of sudden illumination, or so we thought. People evidently deploy Categorical Thinking in their dealings with others because it saves limited (and valuable) attentional resources. In other words, it's all just a matter of mental efficiency. Although sweet and tangible, our elation was short-lived. Almost 40 years earlier, Allport (1954) had arrived at the very same conclusion. Worse still, he had detailed his ideas in a book that is widely regarded as one of social psychology's timeless classics. Scooped! Back to staring at Cher. Never ones to be daunted by a thorough scooping, we considered the issue in a little more detail. So, it's all a matter of preserving attentional resources, but has anyone ever demonstrated this basic effect in the laboratory? Milne then winced, fell toward the table, and groaned somewhat pitifully, the "cognitive miser." Fiske and Taylor's (1984) metaphor, the theme that guided social cognition research for more than a decade, had been based on the premise that mental efficiency is one of the primary objectives of social information processing. Accordingly, the journals must be full of this kind of stuff, or so we thought. Strangely, however, and it could have been due to the effects of the wine, we were unable to think of a single study that had demonstrated the resource-preserving properties of stereotypical Thinking, at least in a way that satisfied our level of curiosity. So, in a wine bar in Roath, our research efforts were launched. Demonstrate something that everyone already believes to be true, but do so in a such a way that the novelty of the contribution is obvious. Is this even possible? Having decided to embark on the research, the generation of the experimental paradigm occurred pretty quickly. If stereotypical Thinking preserves attentional capacity, then the obvious prediction is that these spare resources can be used for something else. Thus, in a dual-task setting, relative to some baseline control condition, Thinking stereotypically on a primary task should enhance performance on some secondary performance measure. The challenge was deriving dual-task paradigms that would convince the academic world (or at least the social cognition portion of it) that stereotypical Thinking preserves attentional resources. In this respect, we decided to try to be as naturalistic as possible in our approach. An obvious primary task would be impression formation. Knowing that stereotypes streamline person perception (at least when some confirmatory information is available), impression formation should be less demanding (i.e., resource preserving) when Categorical labels are present, rather than absent, to guide people's evaluations of others.
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Who or what are you?: Facial orientation and person construal
European Journal of Social Psychology, 2020Co-Authors: Jasmin Cloutier, C. Neil MacraeAbstract:An extensive literature has documented the cognitive benefits that accrue from a Categorical conception of others. While informative, this work has overlooked the fact that, prior to the application of Categorical Thinking as an economizing cognitive tool, perceivers must first extract category-triggering information from available facial cues. What this suggests is that an impetus to construe others Categorically may reside in the perceptual operations that guide the preliminary stages of person understanding. This possibility was explored in three experiments that investigated the effects of stimulus rotation on the efficiency of identity-based and category-based construal. In the first experiment, sex categorization was compared directly to identity-based construal. Subsequent experiments then investigated the efficiency of sex (Experiment 2) and race (Experiment 3) categorization when critical category-specifying facial cues were present and absent. The results demonstrated that Categorical responding is driven by the extraction of featural information from faces, a finding that informs recent theoretical accounts of person perception. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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A face with a cue : Exploring the inevitability of person categorization
European Journal of Social Psychology, 2007Co-Authors: Douglas Martin, C. Neil MacraeAbstract:Recent research has explored the dynamics of Categorical Thinking, with debate centering on the putative automaticity of this process. In a further investigation of this topic, the current inquiry assessed the influence of critical category-cueing facial features on overt (i.e., category identification) and covert (i.e., category priming) measures of sex categorization. The results revealed that when a critical sex-specifying facial cue (i.e., hairstyle) was present, priming effects emerged even under suboptimal processing conditions (i.e., facial blurring). When this cue was absent, however, priming no longer occurred. Interestingly, category identification was largely unimpeded by feature removal or facial blurring. Taken together, these results underscore the efficiency of Categorical Thinking and the importance of task objectives and feature-based processing in person perception. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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A boy primed Sue : Feature-based processing and person construal
European Journal of Social Psychology, 2006Co-Authors: C. Neil Macrae, Douglas MartinAbstract:Everyday social interaction is often dominated by Categorical Thinking, with generic group-based knowledge structures guiding people's dealings with others. Noting the important influence that category-cueing facial features exert during the initial stages of person construal, the current work explored the effects of hair cues on the process and temporal dynamics of sex categorization. Using a standard priming paradigm to index the products of person construal (i.e., Categorical and stereotype- based knowledge), the results of three experiments revealed that: (i) hair cues alone are sufficient to trigger category and stereotype activation; and (ii) during the early stages of person perception, these cues have the capacity to reverse conventional priming effects and generate errors of Categorical assignment (e.g., female faces prime male knowledge). These findings are considered in the context of contemporary accounts of person construal. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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The perceptual determinants of person construal: reopening the social-cognitive toolbox.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2005Co-Authors: Jasmin Cloutier, Malia F. Mason, C. Neil MacraeAbstract:Guided by a heuristic account of social–cognitive functioning, researchers have attempted to identify the cognitive benefits that derive from a Categorical approach to person construal. While revealing, this work has overlooked the fact that, prior to the application of Categorical Thinking as an economizing mental tool, perceivers must first extract category-triggering information from available stimulus cues. It is possible, therefore, that basic perceptual processes may also contribute to people’s propensity to view others in a category-based manner. This possibility was explored in 3 experiments in which the authors investigated the ease with which perceivers can extract Categorical and identity-based knowledge from faces under both optimal and suboptimal (i.e., inverted faces, blurred faces, rapidly presented faces) processing conditions. The results confirmed that Categorical knowledge is extracted from faces more efficiently than identity-related knowledge, a finding that underscores the importance of perceptual operations in the generation of Categorical Thinking.
Mark Levene - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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ASIST - How and why do users change their assessment of search results over time
Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 2020Co-Authors: Maayan Zhitomirsky-geffet, Judit Bar-ilan, Mark LeveneAbstract:In this study we investigate whether and why users change their preferences when assessing search engine results over time. We conducted a study with 35 subjects who were asked to rank and assign relevance scores to the same set of search results for three times, with a few weeks period between each round. The subjects were then exposed to the differences in their judgements and were asked to explain them. A new coefficient to measure change was introduced to assess the results of the experiment. We found that all the subjects judge the vast majority of the results differently in every round. However, there was less change in relevance judgements than in rankings. Most of the subjects were satisfied with their changes, and did not perceive them as mistakes but rather as a legitimate phenomenon, since they believe that time influences the relevance assessment. Our analysis reveals that the main factors that caused these changes were due to Categorical Thinking, influence of the learnt information, and environmental and emotional changes.
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Categorical relevance judgment
Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 2018Co-Authors: Maayan Zhitomirsky-geffet, Judit Bar-ilan, Mark LeveneAbstract:In this study we aim to explore users' behavior when assessing search results relevance based on the hypothesis of Categorical Thinking. To investigate how users categories search engine results, we perform several experiments where users are asked to group a list of 20 search results into several categories, while attaching a relevance judgment to each formed category. Moreover, to determine how users change their minds over time, each experiment was repeated three times under the same conditions, with a gap of one month between rounds. The results show that on average users form 4–5 categories. Within each round the size of a category decreases with the relevance of a category. To measure the agreement between the search engine's ranking and the users’ relevance judgments, we defined two novel similarity measures, the average concordance and the MinMax swap ratio. Similarity is shown to be the highest for the third round as the users' opinion stabilizes. Qualitative analysis uncovered some interesting points that users tended to categories results by type and reliability of their source, and particularly, found commercial sites less trustworthy, and attached high relevance to Wikipedia when their prior domain knowledge was limited.
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Analysis of change in users' assessment of search results over time
Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 2016Co-Authors: Maayan Zhitomirsky-geffet, Judit Bar-ilan, Mark LeveneAbstract:We present the first systematic study of the influence of time on user judgements for rankings and relevance grades of web search engine results. The goal of this study is to evaluate the change in user assessment of search results and explore how users' judgements change. To this end, we conducted a large-scale user study with 86 participants who evaluated 2 different queries and 4 diverse result sets twice with an interval of 2 months. To analyze the results we investigate whether 2 types of patterns of user behavior from the theory of Categorical Thinking hold for the case of evaluation of search results: a coarseness and b locality. To quantify these patterns we devised 2 new measures of change in user judgements and distinguish between local when users swap between close ranks and relevance values and nonlocal changes. Two types of judgements were considered in this study: a relevance on a 4-point scale, and b ranking on a 10-point scale without ties. We found that users tend to change their judgements of the results over time in about 50% of cases for relevance and in 85% of cases for ranking. However, the majority of these changes were local.
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A Markov chain model for changes in users’ assessment of search results
PLOS ONE, 2016Co-Authors: Maayan Zhitomirsky-geffet, Judit Bar-ilan, Mark LeveneAbstract:Previous research shows that users tend to change their assessment of search results over time. This is a first study that investigates the factors and reasons for these changes, and describes a stochastic model of user behaviour that may explain these changes. In particular, we hypothesise that most of the changes are local, i.e. between results with similar or close relevance to the query, and thus belong to the same”coarse” relevance category. According to the theory of coarse beliefs and Categorical Thinking, humans tend to divide the range of values under consideration into coarse categories, and are thus able to distinguish only between cross-category values but not within them. To test this hypothesis we conducted five experiments with about 120 subjects divided into 3 groups. Each student in every group was asked to rank and assign relevance scores to the same set of search results over two or three rounds, with a period of three to nine weeks between each round. The subjects of the last three-round experiment were then exposed to the differences in their judgements and were asked to explain them. We make use of a Markov chain model to measure change in users’ judgments between the different rounds. The Markov chain demonstrates that the changes converge, and that a majority of the changes are local to a neighbouring relevance category. We found that most of the subjects were satisfied with their changes, and did not perceive them as mistakes but rather as a legitimate phenomenon, since they believe that time has influenced their relevance assessment. Both our quantitative analysis and user comments support the hypothesis of the existence of coarse relevance categories resulting from Categorical Thinking in the context of user evaluation of search results.
Michelle K Ryan - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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investigating preschoolers Categorical Thinking about gender through imitation attention and the use of self categories
Child Development, 2008Co-Authors: Diana M Grace, Barbara David, Michelle K RyanAbstract:Whereas traditional theories of gender development have focused on individualistic paths, recent analyses have argued for a more social Categorical approach to children’s understanding of gender. Using a modeling paradigm based on K. Bussey and A. Bandura (1984), 3 experiments (N = 62, N = 32, and N = 64) examined preschoolers’ (M age = 52.9 months) imitation of, and memory for, behaviors of same-sex and opposite-sex children and adults. In all experiments, children’s imitation of models varied according to the emphasis given to the particular category of models, despite equal attention being paid to both categories. It is suggested that the Categorical nature of gender, or age, informs children’s choice of imitative behaviors.
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Investigating Preschoolers’ Categorical Thinking About Gender Through Imitation, Attention, and the Use of Self‐Categories
Child Development, 2008Co-Authors: Diana M Grace, Barbara David, Michelle K RyanAbstract:Whereas traditional theories of gender development have focused on individualistic paths, recent analyses have argued for a more social Categorical approach to children’s understanding of gender. Using a modeling paradigm based on K. Bussey and A. Bandura (1984), 3 experiments (N = 62, N = 32, and N = 64) examined preschoolers’ (M age = 52.9 months) imitation of, and memory for, behaviors of same-sex and opposite-sex children and adults. In all experiments, children’s imitation of models varied according to the emphasis given to the particular category of models, despite equal attention being paid to both categories. It is suggested that the Categorical nature of gender, or age, informs children’s choice of imitative behaviors.
Maayan Zhitomirsky-geffet - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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ASIST - How and why do users change their assessment of search results over time
Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 2020Co-Authors: Maayan Zhitomirsky-geffet, Judit Bar-ilan, Mark LeveneAbstract:In this study we investigate whether and why users change their preferences when assessing search engine results over time. We conducted a study with 35 subjects who were asked to rank and assign relevance scores to the same set of search results for three times, with a few weeks period between each round. The subjects were then exposed to the differences in their judgements and were asked to explain them. A new coefficient to measure change was introduced to assess the results of the experiment. We found that all the subjects judge the vast majority of the results differently in every round. However, there was less change in relevance judgements than in rankings. Most of the subjects were satisfied with their changes, and did not perceive them as mistakes but rather as a legitimate phenomenon, since they believe that time influences the relevance assessment. Our analysis reveals that the main factors that caused these changes were due to Categorical Thinking, influence of the learnt information, and environmental and emotional changes.
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Categorical relevance judgment
Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 2018Co-Authors: Maayan Zhitomirsky-geffet, Judit Bar-ilan, Mark LeveneAbstract:In this study we aim to explore users' behavior when assessing search results relevance based on the hypothesis of Categorical Thinking. To investigate how users categories search engine results, we perform several experiments where users are asked to group a list of 20 search results into several categories, while attaching a relevance judgment to each formed category. Moreover, to determine how users change their minds over time, each experiment was repeated three times under the same conditions, with a gap of one month between rounds. The results show that on average users form 4–5 categories. Within each round the size of a category decreases with the relevance of a category. To measure the agreement between the search engine's ranking and the users’ relevance judgments, we defined two novel similarity measures, the average concordance and the MinMax swap ratio. Similarity is shown to be the highest for the third round as the users' opinion stabilizes. Qualitative analysis uncovered some interesting points that users tended to categories results by type and reliability of their source, and particularly, found commercial sites less trustworthy, and attached high relevance to Wikipedia when their prior domain knowledge was limited.
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Analysis of change in users' assessment of search results over time
Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 2016Co-Authors: Maayan Zhitomirsky-geffet, Judit Bar-ilan, Mark LeveneAbstract:We present the first systematic study of the influence of time on user judgements for rankings and relevance grades of web search engine results. The goal of this study is to evaluate the change in user assessment of search results and explore how users' judgements change. To this end, we conducted a large-scale user study with 86 participants who evaluated 2 different queries and 4 diverse result sets twice with an interval of 2 months. To analyze the results we investigate whether 2 types of patterns of user behavior from the theory of Categorical Thinking hold for the case of evaluation of search results: a coarseness and b locality. To quantify these patterns we devised 2 new measures of change in user judgements and distinguish between local when users swap between close ranks and relevance values and nonlocal changes. Two types of judgements were considered in this study: a relevance on a 4-point scale, and b ranking on a 10-point scale without ties. We found that users tend to change their judgements of the results over time in about 50% of cases for relevance and in 85% of cases for ranking. However, the majority of these changes were local.
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A Markov chain model for changes in users’ assessment of search results
PLOS ONE, 2016Co-Authors: Maayan Zhitomirsky-geffet, Judit Bar-ilan, Mark LeveneAbstract:Previous research shows that users tend to change their assessment of search results over time. This is a first study that investigates the factors and reasons for these changes, and describes a stochastic model of user behaviour that may explain these changes. In particular, we hypothesise that most of the changes are local, i.e. between results with similar or close relevance to the query, and thus belong to the same”coarse” relevance category. According to the theory of coarse beliefs and Categorical Thinking, humans tend to divide the range of values under consideration into coarse categories, and are thus able to distinguish only between cross-category values but not within them. To test this hypothesis we conducted five experiments with about 120 subjects divided into 3 groups. Each student in every group was asked to rank and assign relevance scores to the same set of search results over two or three rounds, with a period of three to nine weeks between each round. The subjects of the last three-round experiment were then exposed to the differences in their judgements and were asked to explain them. We make use of a Markov chain model to measure change in users’ judgments between the different rounds. The Markov chain demonstrates that the changes converge, and that a majority of the changes are local to a neighbouring relevance category. We found that most of the subjects were satisfied with their changes, and did not perceive them as mistakes but rather as a legitimate phenomenon, since they believe that time has influenced their relevance assessment. Both our quantitative analysis and user comments support the hypothesis of the existence of coarse relevance categories resulting from Categorical Thinking in the context of user evaluation of search results.