The Inversion Effect as a Measure of Social Acceptance of Robots.

If robots could engage face-processing they would increase the likelihood they are accepted as social companions. However, research has not examined whether and when robot "faces" engage face-processing. The current study examined whether facial-width-to-height ratio (FWHR) modulated faceprocessing with robots using the "inversion task"-a commonly utilized measure of face perception that leverages the finding that inverting face stimuli hurts recognition performance (i.e., inversion effects) compared to other types of stimuli. We predicted that recognition performance would be more effected by inversion when robots had a low rather than high FWHR. While our statistical results were not significant, descriptive results trended in favor of our hypothesis, demonstrating robots with a lower FHWR had larger inversion effects than robot with a higher FWHR. While more research will be needed to clarify these results, the inversion task is a potentially useful tool to measure the social acceptance of robots through the detection of facial processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]