Can a Robot's Hand Bias Human Attention?

Previous studies have revealed that humans prioritize attention to the space near their hands (the so-called near-hand effect). This effect may also occur towards a human partner’s hand, but only after sharing a physical joint action. Hence, in human dyads, interaction leads to a shared body representation that may influence basic attentional mechanisms. Our project investigates whether a collaborative interaction with a robot might similarly influence attention. To this aim, we designed an experiment to assess whether the mere presence of a robot with an anthropomorphic hand could bias the human partner’s attention. We replicated a classical psychological paradigm to measure this attentional bias (i.e., the near-hand effect) by adding a robotic condition. Preliminary results found the near-hand effect when performing the task with the self-hand near the screen, leading to shorter reaction times on the same side of the hand. On the contrary, we found no effect on the robot’s hand in the absence of previous collaborative interaction with the robot, in line with studies involving human partners.