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Abstract This study employs Conversation Analysis to create a recursive model that improves the quality of human-robot interaction. Our research goal is to create a dialogue robot that offers pleasant experiences for users, so they are willing to engage in repeated interactions in daily lives. While there has been dramatic progress in the performance of dialogue robots, there has been less attention to the importance of users’ interactional experience compared to the “specs” of the dialogue system. Employing Goffmanian insights and using research in Conversation Analysis (CA), the present study develops a dialogue closing system to exit the interaction. We then experimentally verified that the robot with the dialogue closing system performs better in the user’s perception of the robot (i.e. likeability, politeness, and dialogue satisfaction) than the control group. Further, by analyzing the dialogue between the human and the robot through CA, we propose to build a recursive, reflective model to improve the dialogue model design. A constructive approach urges us to reproduce complicated social phenomena in human-robot interaction so that we can investigate the underlying cognitive mechanisms of humans and create robots that can convey human-like cognition functions and coexist with humans. Taking such a constructive approach, we posit that our recursive model for dialogue systems that uses CA insights and then qualitatively analyzes conversational data can enhance the quality of dialogue systems because the model elucidates which properties of a conversation humans need to experience a conversational robot as human-like. Our study suggests that interactional morality - particularly conversational closings - is one property of human interactions that humans likely require social robots to adhere to.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, the adoption of distance learning has been accelerated in educational institutions in multiple countries. In addition to using a videoconferencing system with camera images, avatars can also be used for remote classes. In particular, an android avatar with a sense of presence has the potential to provide higher quality education than a video-recorded lecture. To investigate the specific educational effects of android avatars, we used a Geminoid. an android with the appearance of a specific individual, and conducted both laboratory experiment and large-scale field experiment. The first compared the android avatar lecture with a videoconferencing system. We found that the use of an android avatar for the lecture led to the significantly higher subjective feelings of being seen, feeling more motivated, and focused on the lecture compared to the video lecture. We further conducted a large-scale field experiment with an android avatar to clarify what contributes to such educational effects. The results suggest that the students’ perception of android’s anthroppomorphism and competence has a positive impact, and discomfort has a negative impact on the subjective experence of educational effect. These results indicate the role of embodied anthropomorphization in positive educational experience. The important point of this study is that both the laboratory experiment and the large-scale experiment were conducted to clarify the educational effects of androids. These results support several related studies and are clarified in detail. Based on these results, the potential for the future usage of androids in education is discussed.

IntroductionThis study focused on the psychological evaluation of an avatar robot in two distinct regions, Dubai in the Middle East and Japan in the Far East. Dubai has experienced remarkable development in advanced technology, while Japan boasts a culture that embraces robotics. These regions are distinctively characterized by their respective relationships with robotics. In addition, the use of robots as avatars is anticipated to increase, and this research aimed to compare the psychological impressions of people from these regions when interacting with an avatar as opposed to a human.MethodsConsidering that avatars can be presented on screens or as physical robots, two methodologies were employed: a video presentation survey (Study 1, Dubai: n = 120, Japan: n = 120) and an experiment involving live interactions with a physical robot avatar (Study 2, Dubai: n = 28, Japan: n = 30).Results and discussionResults from the video presentations indicated that participants from Dubai experienced significantly lower levels of discomfort towards the avatar compared to their Japanese counterparts. In contrast, during live interactions, Japanese participants showed a notably positive evaluation towards a Japanese human operator. The findings suggest that screen-presented avatars may be more readily accepted in Dubai, while humans were generally preferred over avatars in terms of positive evaluations when physical robots were used as avatars. The study also discusses the implications of these findings for the appropriate tasks for avatars and the relationship between cultural backgrounds and avatar evaluations.

Abstract Background Providing medical care on isolated islands can be challenging in several ways. Telepsychiatry can potentially offer a solution for accessible psychiatric services on isolated islands. When video conferencing is used in telepsychiatry, the psychiatry specialist, who is remotely located, may find it difficult to establish trust. To address this, we developed a teleoperated robot system termed “Sota 100,” which is equipped to convey various elements of nonverbal communication, such as eye contact, in remote settings. Case Presentation In this report, we introduce the case of a patient with alcohol use disorder who lived on an isolated island and received medical care from a primary care physician at the island's medical clinic and from Sota 100 teleoperated by a psychiatry specialist. Using this system, the patient admitted that he had developed a physical illness and had damaged his relationships partly because of alcohol abuse. At the conclusion of the three‐way conversation, the patient understood that stopping drinking alcohol was the only way to prevent worsening his physical condition and damaging his relationships further. Concurrently, the primary care physician gained a deeper understanding of the etiology of alcohol use disorder and of how to support patients with alcohol dependency. Conclusion These case findings suggest that our system is helpful for patients with alcohol use disorder who need to receive telepsychiatry services. Future studies should include single‐case experimental designs with regular measurements of key outcome variables and other relevant variables over time.

Abstract Background Childcare leave extensions can sometimes negatively affect the professional clinical training of early‐career psychiatrists in Japan. During childcare leave, being able to learn in the examination room while staying at home would be useful. Therefore, we developed a training system using a teleoperated robot (Sota) for young psychiatrists who wanted to participate in the examination room during childcare leave while remaining at home. Case Presentation We report the case of a patient with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) comorbid with Tourette's disorders (P). A young female psychiatrist (D) used the training system to learn from a board‐certified psychiatrist. In this case, the board‐certified psychiatrist, P, and the robot were placed in the examination room. D teleoperated Sota from home, allowing her to talk to the board‐certified psychiatrist and P. She learned about the clinical features of Tourette's syndrome by observing the examination of the board‐certified psychiatrist and hearing the patient's distress. P was satisfied with the fact that he was seen not only by a board‐certified psychiatrist but also by D. Conclusion These case findings suggest that our system is helpful for young psychiatrists who want to study in the examination room during childcare leave while staying at home. Future studies should include a single‐case experimental design with information regarding key outcome variables and other relevant variables gathered regularly over time.

BackgroundRobots offer many unique opportunities for helping individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Determining the optimal motion of robots when interacting with individuals with ASD is important for achieving more natural human-robot interactions and for exploiting the full potential of robotic interventions. Most prior studies have used supervised machine learning (ML) of user behavioral data to enable robot perception of affective states (i.e., arousal and valence) and engagement. It has previously been suggested that including personal demographic information in the identification of individuals with ASD is important for developing an automated system to perceive individual affective states and engagement. In this study, we hypothesized that assessing self-administered questionnaire data would contribute to the development of an automated estimation of the affective state and engagement when individuals with ASD are interviewed by an Android robot, which will be linked to implementing long-term interventions and maintaining the motivation of participants.MethodsParticipants sat across a table from an android robot that played the role of the interviewer. Each participant underwent a mock job interview. Twenty-five participants with ASD (males 22, females 3, average chronological age = 22.8, average IQ = 94.04) completed the experiment. We collected multimodal data (i.e., audio, motion, gaze, and self-administered questionnaire data) to train a model to correctly classify the state of individuals with ASD when interviewed by an android robot. We demonstrated the technical feasibility of using ML to enable robot perception of affect and engagement of individuals with ASD based on multimodal data.ResultsFor arousal and engagement, the area under the curve (AUC) values of the model estimates and expert coding were relatively high. Overall, the AUC values of arousal, valence, and engagement were improved by including self-administered questionnaire data in the classification.DiscussionThese findings support the hypothesis that assessing self-administered questionnaire data contributes to the development of an automated estimation of an individual’s affective state and engagement. Given the efficacy of including self-administered questionnaire data, future studies should confirm the effectiveness of such long-term intervention with a robot to maintain participants’ motivation based on the proposed method of emotion estimation.

In recent years, the development of robots that can engage in non-task-oriented dialogue with people, such as chat, has received increasing attention. This study aims to clarify the factors that improve the user’s willingness to talk with robots in non-task oriented dialogues (e.g., chat). A previous study reported that exchanging subjective opinions makes such dialogue enjoyable and enthusiastic. In some cases, however, the robot’s subjective opinions are not realistic, i.e., the user believes the robot does not have opinions, thus we cannot attribute the opinion to the robot. For example, if a robot says that alcohol tastes good, it may be difficult to imagine the robot having such an opinion. In this case, the user’s motivation to exchange opinions may decrease. In this study, we hypothesize that regardless of the type of robot, opinion attribution affects the user’s motivation to exchange opinions with humanoid robots. We examined the effect by preparing various opinions of two kinds of humanoid robots. The experimental result suggests that not only the users’ interest in the topic but also the attribution of the subjective opinions to them influence their motivation to exchange opinions. Another analysis revealed that the android significantly increased the motivation when they are interested in the topic and do not attribute opinions, while the small robot significantly increased it when not interested and attributed opinions. In situations where there are opinions that cannot be attributed to humanoid robots, the result that androids are more motivating when users have the interests even if opinions are not attributed can indicate the usefulness of androids.

Introduction: There has been a surge in the use of social robots for providing information, persuasion, and entertainment in noisy public spaces in recent years. Considering the well-documented negative effect of noise on human cognition, masking sounds have been introduced. Masking sounds work, in principle, by making the intrusive background speeches less intelligible, and hence, less distracting. However, this reduced distraction comes with the cost of increasing annoyance and reduced cognitive performance in the users of masking sounds.Methods: In a previous study, it was shown that reducing the fundamental frequency of the speech-shaped noise as a masking sound significantly contributes to its being less annoying and more efficient. In this study, the effectiveness of the proposed masking sound was tested on the performance of subjects listening to a lecture given by a social robot in a noisy cocktail party environment.Results: The results indicate that the presence of the masking sound significantly increased speech comprehension, perceived understandability, acoustic satisfaction, and sound privacy of the individuals listening to the robot in an adverse listening condition.Discussion: To the knowledge of the authors, no previous work has investigated the application of sound masking technology in human-robot interaction designs. The future directions of this trend are discussed.

IntroductionGrowing anecdotal evidence suggests the feasibility of robotic intervention for people who suffer from disorders related to state anxiety. Few studies have been conducted on utilizing robots for persons who stutter (PWS). The present study examines the feasibility of using a robot for speech therapy for PWS.MethodsWe prepared four settings (i.e., interviews with unfamiliar persons, interviews with unfamiliar communication robots, reading sentences aloud with a tandem robot that can utter the same words as a user by repeating the user’s voice after a short delay, and reading sentences aloud while being alone). We assessed the potential of the robots as both interlocutors and practice partners in training with delayed auditory feedback (DAF) for PWS. Moreover, we assessed the relationship between the trait of stuttering and the participants’ affinity to the robots.ResultsEleven PWS participated in the study. Eight (72.7%) participants had fewer stuttering-related psychological symptoms when they communicated with robots than when they communicated with humans. Spearman’s rank correlation analysis revealed that there was a significant negative correlation between the Modified Erickson Communication Attitude scale (S-24) and the difference between the scores for stuttering-related psychological symptoms pertaining to the communication robot and humans (p

This study investigated the effects of animated food consumption on human psychology. We developed a movable, edible robot and evaluated the participants' impressions induced by the visualization of its movements and eating of the robot. Although several types of edible robots have been developed, to the best of our knowledge, the psychological effects associated with the eating of a robot have not been investigated. We developed a pneumatically driven edible robot using gelatin and sugar. We examined its perceived appearance and the participants' impressions when it was eaten. In the robot-eating experiment, we evaluated two conditions: one in which the robot was moved and one in which it was stationary. Our results showed that participants perceived the moving robot differently from the stationary robot, leading to varied perceptions, when consuming it. Additionally, we observed a difference in perceived texture when the robot was bitten and chewed under the two conditions. These findings provide valuable insights into the practical applications of edible robots in various contexts, such as the medical field and culinary entertainment.

The number of older adults living alone is rapidly increasing. Loneliness in older adults not only degrade their quality of life but also causes troubles such as heavy burden on the medical staff, especially when cognitive decline is present. Social robots could be used in several ways to reduce such problems. As a first step towards this goal, we introduced conversation robots into the homes of older adults with cognitive decline to evaluate the robot’s availability and acceptance during several months. The study involved two steps, one for evaluating the robustness of the proposed robotic system, and the second one to examine the long-term acceptance of social robots by older adults with cognitive decline living alone. Our data shows that after several weeks of human-robot interaction, the participants continued to use the robot and successfully integrated them into their lives. These results open the possibility of further research involving how sustained interaction can be achieved, as well as which factors contributed to the acceptance of the robot.

The increasing need for human-robot interaction requires not only robots to understand how humans think, but also humans to understand robots. Interestingly, little attention has been given to how humans interpret robots’ behaviors. In this study, we adopted a social mental rotation task and investigated whether socially engaging behaviors could influence how people take a robot’s perspectives. In a real lab, two android robots with neutral appearance sat opposite each other by a table with conflicting perspectives. Before the participant started the experiment, one of the robots behaved more interactively than the other by showing more socially engaging behaviors. Then the participant was required to identify rotated normal or mirrored digits presented inbetween the two robots. Results revealed a significant interactive effect between the digits type (normal; mirrored) and robot type (interactive; noninteractive). When digits were oriented to the interactive robot, we found a larger RT difference between normal and mirrored digits. In general, these findings suggested that robots’ interactive behaviors could influence how people spontaneously consider the robot’s perspective. Future studies may further consider how interactive behaviors can shape human-robot relationships and facilitate human-robot interaction.

Abstract Radiation therapy (RT) can enhance the abscopal effect of immune checkpoint blockade. This phase I/II study investigated the efficacy and safety of nivolumab plus RT in HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer requiring palliative RT for bone metastases. Cohort A included luminal-like disease, and cohort B included both luminal-like and triple-negative disease refractory to standard systemic therapy. Patients received 8 Gy single fraction RT for bone metastasis on day 0. Nivolumab was administered on day 1 for each 14-day cycle. In cohort A, endocrine therapy was administered. The primary endpoint was the objective response rate (ORR) of the unirradiated lesions. Cohorts A and B consisted of 18 and 10 patients, respectively. The ORR was 11% (90% CI 4–29%) in cohort A and 0% in cohort B. Disease control rates were 39% (90% CI 23–58%) and 0%. Median progression-free survival was 4.1 months (95% CI 2.1–6.1 months) and 2.0 months (95% CI 1.2–3.7 months). One patient in cohort B experienced a grade 3 adverse event. Palliative RT combined with nivolumab was safe and showed modest anti-tumor activity in cohort A. Further investigations to enhance the anti-tumor effect of endocrine therapy combined with RT plus immune checkpoint blockade are warranted. Trial registration number and date of registration UMIN: UMIN000026046, February 8, 2017; ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT03430479, February 13, 2018; Date of the first registration: June 22, 2017.

IntroductionJob interviews are a major barrier to employment for individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). During the coronavirus pandemic, establishing online job interview training at home was indispensable. However, many hurdles prevent individuals with ASD from concentrating on online job interview training. To facilitate the acquisition of interview skills from home for individuals with ASD, we developed a group interview training program with a virtual conferencing system (GIT-VICS Program) that uses computer graphics (CG) robots.MethodsThis study investigated the feasibility of the GIT-VICS Program in facilitating skill acquisition for face-to-face job interviews in pre-post measures. In the GIT-VICS Program, five participants were grouped and played the roles of interviewees (1), interviewers (2), and human resources (2). They alternately practiced each role in GIT-VICS Program sessions conducted over 8 or 9 days over three consecutive weeks. Before and after the GIT-VICS Program, the participants underwent a mock face-to-face job interview with two experienced human interviewers (MFH) to evaluate its effect.ResultsFourteen participants completed the trial procedures without experiencing any technological challenges or distress that would have led to the termination of the session. The GIT-VICS Program improved their job interview skills (verbal competence, nonverbal competence, and interview performance).DiscussionGiven the promising results of this study and to draw clear conclusions about the efficacy of CG robots for mock online job interview training, future studies adding appropriate guidance for manner of job interview by experts are needed.

In recent years, various service robots have been deployed in stores as recommendation systems. Previous studies have sought to increase the influence of these robots by enhancing their social acceptance and trust. However, when such service robots recommend a product to customers in real environments, the effect on the customers is influenced not only by the robot itself, but also by the social influence of the surrounding people such as store clerks. Therefore, leveraging the social influence of the clerks may increase the influence of the robots on the customers. Hence, we compared the influence of robots with and without collaborative customer service between the robots and clerks in two bakery stores. The experimental results showed that collaborative customer service increased the purchase rate of the recommended bread and improved the impressions of the robot and store experience of the customers. Because the results also showed that the workload required for the clerks to collaborate with the robot was not high, this study suggests that all stores with service robots may demonstrate high effectiveness in introducing collaborative customer service.

IntroductionSocial skills training (SST) is used to help individuals with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) better understand the perspectives of others and social interactions, develop empathy skills, and learn how to engage with others socially. However, many individuals with ASC cannot easily sustain high motivation and concentration during such an intervention when it is administered by humans. We developed a social skills training program using multiple humanoid robots (STUH), including an android robot, that aimed to enable individuals with ASC to become familiar with the perspectives of others and improve their sociability and empathy skills. The objective of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of STUH for these individuals.MethodsIn STUH, we prepared 50 social exercises that consisted of conversations and behavioral interactions between an android robot and a simple humanoid robot. We prepared another humanoid robot that featured a cartoon-like and mechanical design, which played the role of host. In the first half-session of STUH, participants worked on the exercise from the perspective of an outsider. In the second half-session of STUH, they simulated experience by using robots as their avatars. The intervention associated with STUH was conducted for five days in total. We conducted an analysis of variance (ANOVA) featuring the intervention time point as the independent variable to examine changes in each score on the sociability index items.ResultsIn total, 14 individuals with ASC participated in the study. The results of multiple comparison tests using the Bonferroni method indicated that all sociability index items improved between preintervention and follow-up. Our program enabled the participants to become familiar with the perspectives of others and improve their sociability.DiscussionGiven the promising results of this study, future studies featuring long-term follow-up should be conducted to draw definitive conclusions about the efficacy of our training system.

Abstract Synchronization between humans is often observed in our daily lives, for example in breathing, in hand clapping in crowds, and in walking. It has been reported that pedestrian gait synchronization maximizes walking flow efficiency. As increasingly more mobile robots are being developed for practical use, it is important to consider how robots may impact pedestrian flows. While there is research on synchronization phenomena between humans and robots, gait synchronization between humans and robots has yet to be studied, particularly synchronization occurring with wheeled humanoid robots while moving. In this paper, we investigated the gait phase synchronization between humans and a wheeled mobile humanoid robot, which moved its upper body in three distinct types of motion patterns: (1) no-motion, (2) arm-swinging (as is common for typical mobile humanoids), and (3) arms-swinging in addition to periodic vertical-oscillation similar to the human upper body movement while walking. Rayleigh test was performed on the distribution of the obtained gait phase differences under each condition and a significant distributional bias was confirmed when participants were walking with the robot that performed both arm-swinging and vertical-oscillation of the upper body. These results suggest that humans can spontaneously synchronize their gaits with wheeled robots that utilize upper body oscillating. These findings can be important for the design of robot-integrated urban transportation systems, such as train stations and airports, where both humans and robots are mobile and a highly efficient flow is required.

Abstract Studies on social robots that can communicate with humans are increasingly important. In particular, semi-aautonomous robots have shown potential for practical applications in which robot autonomy and human teleoperation are jointly used to accomplish difficult tasks. However, it is unknown how the attitude represented in the autonomous behavior of the robots affects teleoperators. Previous studies reported that when humans play a particular role, their attitudes align with that role. The teleoperators of semi-autonomous robots also play the role given to the robots and may assimilate their autonomous expression. We hypothesized that the attitude of teleoperators may align with that of robots through teleoperation. To verify this, we conducted an experiment with conditions under which a participant operated a part of the body of an android robot that autonomously expressed a preferential attitude toward a painting and a condition under which they did not. Experimental results demonstrated that the preferential attitude of participants who teleoperated the android aligned statistically significantly more with that of the robot in comparison to those who did not teleoperate it, thereby supporting our hypothesis. This finding is novel regarding attitude change in teleoperators of semi-autonomous robots and can support the implementation of effective human-robot collaboration systems.

Introduction The antibody-drug conjugate trastuzumab deruxtecan (T-DXd) has led to a change in the clinical management of breast cancer. Nausea and vomiting are the most common adverse events of T-DXd, which cannot be completely alleviated by standard prophylactic regimens. Olanzapine is particularly effective in preventing delayed nausea caused by chemotherapy. In this study, we will evaluate the efficacy of olanzapine in managing persistent nausea and vomiting during T-DXd treatment.Methods and analysis The ERICA study is a multicentre, placebo-controlled, double-blind, randomised phase II study with the aim to evaluate the antiemetic effects of the prophylactic olanzapine (5 mg orally, on days 1–6) or placebo combined with a 1,5-hydroxytryptamine-3 (5-HT3)–receptor antagonist and dexamethasone in patients with human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-positive metastatic breast cancer undergoing T-DXd treatment. For a period of 22 days from the day of T-DXd treatment, patients will document their experience in an electronic symptom diary daily during observational periods. The primary endpoint is the complete response rate, defined as no vomiting and no rescue medications during the ‘delayed phase’ of 24–120 hours post-T-DXd administration. In addition, we define 120–504 hour as the ‘persistent phase’ and 0–504 hours as the ‘overall phase’ for secondary endpoint analysis. We have estimated that a total sample size of at least 156 patients is needed to allow a power of 80% at a one-sided significance level of 20% in this study. The target sample size is set to 166 to account for possible case exclusions.Ethics and dissemination The study protocol is approved by the West Japan Oncology Group protocol review committee and the SHOWA University Clinical Research Review Board. The study results will be presented at international conferences and published in a peer-reviewed journal.Trial registration number jRCTs031210410.

Introduction: In this study, the development of a social robot, capable of giving speech simultaneously in more than one language was in mind. However, the negative effect of background noise on speech comprehension is well-documented in previous works. This deteriorating effect is more highlighted when the background noise has speech-like properties. Hence, the presence of speech as the background noise in a simultaneously speaking bilingual robot can be fatal for the speech comprehension of each person listening to the robot.Methods: To improve speech comprehension and consequently, user experience in the intended bilingual robot, the effect of time expansion on speech comprehension in a multi-talker speech scenario was investigated. Sentence recognition, speech comprehension, and subjective evaluation tasks were implemented in the study.Results: The obtained results suggest that a reduced speech rate, leading to an expansion in the speech time, in addition to increased pause duration in both the target and background speeches can lead to statistically significant improvement in both sentence recognition, and speech comprehension of participants. More interestingly, participants got a higher score in the time-expanded multi-talker speech than in the standard-speed single-talker speech in the speech comprehension and, in the sentence recognition task. However, this positive effect could not be attributed merely to the time expansion, as we could not repeat the same positive effect in a time-expanded single-talker speech.Discussion: The results obtained in this study suggest a facilitating effect of the presence of the background speech in a simultaneously speaking bilingual robot provided that both languages are presented in a time-expanded manner. The implications of such a simultaneously speaking robot are discussed.

BackgroundReaction behaviors by human-looking agents to nonverbal communication cues significantly affect how they are perceived as well as how they directly affect interactions. Some studies have evaluated such reactions toward several interactions, although few approached before-touch situations and how the agent’s reaction is perceived. Specifically, it has not been considered how pre-touch reactions impact the interaction, the influence of gaze behavior in a before-touch situation context and how it can condition the participant’s perception and preferences in the interaction. The present study investigated the factors that define pre-touch reactions in a humanoid avatar in a virtual reality environment and how they influence people’s perceptions of the avatars.MethodsWe performed two experiments to assess the differences between approaches from inside and outside the field of view (FoV) and implemented four different gaze behaviors: face-looking, hand-looking, face-then-hand looking and hand-then-face looking behaviors. We also evaluated the participants’ preferences based on the perceived human-likeness, naturalness, and likeability. In Experiment 1, we evaluated the number of steps in gaze behavior, the order of the gaze-steps and the gender; Experiment 2 evaluated the number and order of the gaze-steps.ResultsA two-step gaze behavior was perceived as more human and more natural from both inside and outside the field of view and that a face-first looking behavior when defining only a one-step gaze movement was preferable to hand-first looking behavior from inside the field of view. Regarding the location from where the approach was performed, our results show that a relatively complex gaze movement, including a face-looking behavior, is fundamental for improving the perceptions of agents in before-touch situations.DiscussionThe inclusion of gaze behavior as part of a possible touch interaction is helpful for developing more responsive avatars and gives another communication channel for increasing the immersion and enhance the experience in Virtual Reality environments, extending the frontiers of haptic interaction and complementing the already studied nonverbal communication cues.

IntroductionIn Japan, the social climate surrounding older adults has gotten worse as a result of the spread of COVID-19 and the growing isolation of older adults who are increasingly unable to engage in prosocial behavior through work and volunteering. This is detrimental to the physical and mental well-being of older adults. The purpose of this study is to look into robot teleoperation for older adults as a viable way to deal with these issues and overcome the barriers preventing older adults from engaging in prosocial behavior.Materials and methodsWe designed and tested a remote-control approach for dialogue agents that is appropriate for older adults as well as evaluating their impressions in a real-world setting. Twelve older adults participated in experiments in two separate locations, a children's center and the city ward office, where they could remotely teleoperate a robot and have conversations with the visitors. In the city ward office, the older adults had a conversation with the visitors and gave them information and trivia quizzes about the city. In the children's center, older adults had conversations with children regarding their age, family, their likes, and dislikes. A questionnaire and interview were set up after the experiments to understand their impressions of the system and to clarify how older adults feel about certain issues regarding remote-controlled work, starting a new job, social interaction, to what extent have older adults been affected by the pandemic, how and in what ways has it affected their involvement in society, and whether teleoperating a robot can be a suitable approach to encourage prosocial behavior from them through volunteer work and social engagement.ResultsThe results show that older adults have a strong desire to engage in volunteer work, but are hampered mainly by physical isolation resulting from COVID-19 restrictions and their declining physical and mental health. Their impressions of the teleoperation system were highly positive, as they enjoyed having conversations with children through the robot. With this teleoperation system, older adults were able to remote control a robot by themselves without major issues. It made interaction simpler as conversing with children through a robot added a layer of anonymity that allowed older adults to express themselves freely without worrying about how they are perceived by others in public.DiscussionOlder adults were able to successfully engage in prosocial behavior through remote-controlling a robot. The system seems to be effective at easing the physical barriers preventing older adults from engaging in volunteer work, which have worsened since the spread of COVID-19.

In modern society, where nations and even individuals are divided, building bridges between people of different personalities and backgrounds is essential to achieve harmonious coexistence. In recent years, research has been conducted on the use of technologies to bridge this gap. In this study, the effectiveness of using immersive virtual reality (IVR) technology to play the role of a stranger in helping people learn about and empathize with others was investigated. Specifically, participants were asked to role-play a first-time stranger in an IVR environment after being given prior information about the stranger via a preparatory video. The effects of role-playing between acting as a target stranger through his or her avatar in an immersive environment, acting through a different avatar in an immersive environment, and acting through his or her avatars in a non-immersive interface were compared. The results showed that using IVR technology with an exact avatar to play the target person was found to have the greatest effect on the participants’ personalities and thoughts as well as increasing their empathy for that individual. This finding suggests that IVR technology may be an effective tool for bridging the gap between people from different backgrounds.

Robotic assistive technology for frail older adults has drawn attention, along with raising ethical concerns. The ethical implications of a robot's usage have been characterized in the literature as detrimental, such as emotional deception, unhealthy attachment, and reduced human contact from a deontological perspective. These concerns require practical investigations, although the long-term effect of robot usage on older adults remains uncertain. Our longitudinal study aimed to investigate how older adults with cognitive decline could be affected by using a robot for communication in their homes and how this situation could be reflected in possible emotional attachment to the robot i.e., emotional distress from the robot being taken away once they had become attached to it. We selected 13 older adults living alone and set up a humanoid robot in their homes with whom they could interact at any time for a period of 1–4 months. Questionnaire results indicated participants had a close attachment to the robots even after they were taken away. Interviews revealed that participants became distressed without the robots; however, despite the distress caused by feeling lonely, participants reported that their relationships with the robots were meaningful and that they were satisfied with the memories of having had the robot as a companion. The results raised new questions for further investigation into issues that should be addressed and potential factors affecting the user's adaptation processes. Regarding the consequences of the use of a companion robot, it is important to evaluate the positive aspects of the robot's usage including the emotional support lasting after it was no longer available and other effects on the users. Accordingly, we emphasize the significance of real-world exploration into the effects on the users as well as theoretical reflection on appropriate robot usage.

People with communication difficulties encounter several challenges in their daily online interactions, such as a limited right to talk (RoT), insufficient social support (SS), and a low sense of being attended to (SoBA). Computer-mediated technologies are limited in addressing such problems owing to their limited capacity in transferring verbal and nonverbal cues between users. In this study, to address the limited RoT, low SS, and low SoBA challenges, we proposed a robotic video conference system with two teleoperated robot avatars. The proposed system was compared with another robotic video conference system that adopts only one teleoperated robot avatar. In the field experiment, 37 participants took part in two discussion sessions using each system type, where RoT, SS, and SoBA were adopted as the measured indices. The proposed system significantly increased the users' RoT and SS compared with other robotic video conference systems. This study contributes to the literature by demonstrating the effect exerted by the type of robotic video conference adopted on users' feelings about RoT, SS, and SoBA.

Nature vs. nurture is an enduring theme of studies of the mind. Past studies on American children and adults have revealed a preference for thinking that even fundamental cognitive abilities documented in human infants and non-human species are late-emerging and reliant on learning and nurture. However, little is known about the generalizability of this “intuitive empiricist” belief and what factors may help explain it. Adult participants (N = 600) reported their beliefs about the emergence of several fundamental cognitive abilities demonstrated by preverbal infants. Studies 1A-1C showed that adults from both Japan and the US similarly estimated an older age of onset for cognitive abilities in human children as compared to the findings of cognitive science and consistently attributed acquisition of these abilities to learning rather than innateness in humans, and they made these learning attributions more so for humans than for non-human species. Study 2 showed that participants’ beliefs about biological evolution versus creationism were related to their age onset estimates for fundamental cognitive abilities, and their beliefs about the malleability of intelligence were related to participants’ explanations of the origin of fundamental cognitive abilities. These findings suggest generalizable preferences for nurture over nature across both Eastern and Western cultures (Japan and the United States), which may be related to people’s beliefs about human origins and the power of learning.

This study shows an autonomous android robot that can have a natural daily dialogue with humans. The dialogue system for daily dialogue is different from a task-oriented dialogue system in that it is not given a clear purpose or the necessary information. That is, it needs to generate an utterance in a situation where there is no clear request from humans. Therefore, to continue a dialogue with a consistent content, it is necessary to essentially change the design policy of dialogue management compared with the existing dialogue system. The purpose of our study is to constructively find out the dialogue system architecture for realizing daily dialogue through implementing an autonomous dialogue robot capable of daily natural dialogue. We defined the android’s desire necessary for daily dialogue and the dialogue management system in which the android changes its internal (mental) states in accordance to the desire and partner’s behavior and chooses a dialogue topic suitable for the current situation. The developed android could continue daily dialogue for about 10 min in the scene where the robot and partner met for the first time in the experiment. Moreover, a multimodal Turing test has shown that half of the participants had felt that the android was remotely controlled to some degree, that is, the android’s behavior was humanlike. This result suggests that the system construction method assumed in this study is an effective approach to realize daily dialogue, and the study discusses the system architecture for daily dialogue.

Abstract The number of isolated elderly people with few opportunities to talk to other people is currently increasing. Research is ongoing to develop talking robots for addressing the situation. The aim of the present study was to develop a talking robot that could converse with elderly people over an extended period. To enable long-duration conversation, we added a previously proposed active listening function for twining the robot dialogue system to prompt the user to say something. To verify the effectiveness of this function, a comparative experiment was performed using the proposed robot system and a control system with identical functions except the active listening function. The results showed that the conversation of the elderly subjects with the proposed robot system was significantly more than that with the control system. The capability of the developed robot system was further demonstrated in a nursing home for the elderly, where its conversation durations with different residents were measured. The results revealed that the robot could converse for more than 30 min with more than half of the elderly subjects. These results indicate that the additional function of the proposed talking robot system would enable elderly people to talk over longer periods of time.

Abstract This study aimed to evaluate the predictions of dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) for prognosis of triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), especially with residual disease (RD) after preoperative chemotherapy. This retrospective analysis included 74 TNBC patients who received preoperative chemotherapy. DCE-MRI findings from three timepoints were examined: at diagnosis (MRIpre), at midpoint (MRImid) and after chemotherapy (MRIpost). These findings included cancer lesion size, washout index (WI) as a kinetic parameter using the difference in signal intensity between early and delayed phases, and time-signal intensity curve types. Distant disease-free survival was analysed using the log-rank test to compare RD group with and without a fast-washout curve. The diagnostic performance of DCE-MRI findings, including positive predictive value (PPV) for pathological responses, was also calculated. RD without fast washout curve was a significantly better prognostic factor, both at MRImid and MRIpost (hazard ratio = 0.092, 0.098, p

AbstractDuring discourse comprehension, information from prior processing is integrated and appears to be immediately accessible. This was remarkably demonstrated by an N400 for “salted” and not “in love” in response to “The peanut was salted/in love.” Discourse overrule was induced by prior discourse featuring the peanut as an animate agent. Immediate discourse overrule requires a model that integrates information at two timescales. One is over the lifetime and includes event knowledge and word semantics. The second is over the discourse in an event context. We propose a model where both are accounted for by temporal-to-spatial integration of experience into distributed spatial representations, providing immediate access to experience accumulated over different timescales. For lexical semantics, this is modeled by a word embedding system trained by sequential exposure to the entire Wikipedia corpus. For discourse, this is modeled by a recurrent reservoir network trained to generate a discourse vector for input sequences of words. The N400 is modeled as the difference between the instantaneous discourse vector and the target word. We predict this model can account for semantic immediacy and discourse overrule. The model simulates lexical priming and discourse overrule in the “Peanut in love” discourse, and it demonstrates that an unexpected word elicits reduced N400 if it is generally related to the event described in prior discourse, and that this effect disappears when the discourse context is removed. This neurocomputational model is the first to simulate immediacy and overrule in discourse-modulated N400, and contributes to characterization of online integration processes in discourse.

Humans can express their emotions with not only facial expressions or gestures but also whole-body motion, even while walking, which are essential for our interpersonal relationships and our interaction with others. Communication with people is also considered an important task for robots, however emotional expressions by wheeled mobile humanoid robots when moving has not been well studied. In this paper, we implemented emotional human-like gait-induced upper body motion in a mobile android ibuki. We hypothesize that the gait-induced upper body motion with vertical oscillation enhances the human perception of a mobile robot’s emotional expressions. ibuki is a mobile robot, which has a vertical oscillation mechanism, which enables the robot to move its body with a human gait-induced upper body motion. We ran two experiments in which participants watched videos of ibuki moving in a room expressing different emotions - anger, happiness, and sadness–, before answering how they perceived the emotion and their respective confidence level in their answer. Our results show that for motions with vertical oscillation, recognition rates were: 56.0 % for anger, 77.7 % for happiness, and 97.0 % for sadness. We also found that the recognition rate and confidence level of motions expressing happiness with vertical oscillation were higher. Our results play an important role in opening up avenues for more natural ways of interaction between humans and robots. For example, by approaching humans closer while expressing emotions, a robot can naturally provide an opportunity to get started conversation with them.

We propose a new wearable agent, “FinU (Friend in You),” based on the hypothesis that inducing social facilitation effect, i.e., the effect of having other agents around to increase the task performance, is possible, even for wearable agents with a single sensory modality, by establishing beliefs about the agent in advance. Our agent system, FinU, consists of two devices: FinU-Box, a box-shaped device that synchronizes visual, auditory, and tactile stimuli to represent an agent living on the user’s hand, and the FinU-Band, a wearable device worn on the hand with a sensory modality limited to tactile stimuli. In this study, in addition to the development of the system, we also conducted preliminarily evaluation by dividing the participants into two experimental conditions: one in which subjects interacted with the agent using the FinU-Box beforehand, and one in which participants did not use the FinU-Band. By having the user learn beliefs about the agent from the FinU-Box, it was expected that the user would attribute higher presence to the agent than if they had not learned beliefs. Participants were then tested on a continuous performance task to measure the effect of social facilitation, which was expected to improve performance, and their performance was compared across conditions. We assumed that higher performance indicated a stronger sense of agent presence. The results showed that the social facilitation effect was stronger for participants who had experienced the FinU-Box beforehand, as they responded more accurately to the task stimuli. This suggests that our system, which combining a device that presents a rich sensory experience with a wearable device that presents a single sensory experience would allow the agent’s presence to be more strongly felt by the user.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) affects a variety of social skills in children. One of the most important social skills that are affected by ASD is the ability to pay attention; ASD introduces unnecessary temporal delays in the attentional behavior of children toward external stimuli. This research focuses on identifying the effect of different social stimuli from robotic agents to assess the attentional behavior of children with ASD. Latencies in shifting attention and the number of attentions paid to a stimulus are defined as indexes of attentional behaviors for children with ASD. Nine children with ASD (seven males and two females, mean: 7.57 ± 2.57 years) that had minimal to no symptoms of autism participated in this study. Two robotic agents presented visual, speech, and motion social stimuli to the participants. Regarding social stimuli, a significant effect on the latency in shifting attention ( $\chi ^{2}(2)=9.55$ , $\text {p} = 0.008$ ) and the number of attentions paid ( $\chi ^{2}(2)=9.56$ , p = 0.008) was observed in children with ASD. The speech stimulus captured the children’s attention faster than the visual and motion stimuli in terms of latency in shifting attention and the number of attentions paid. Moreover, significant positive correlations were found for some pairs of stimuli among visual, speech, and motion stimuli for latencies in shifting attention, as well as the number of attentions paid using Pearson’s correlation analysis. This study contributes to the literature in terms of the impact of robotic stimuli on the attentional behavior of children with ASD.

Many individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) demonstrate some challenges with personal narrative writing. Sentence completion tests (SCT) is a class of semi-structured projective techniques and encourage respondents to disclose their private narratives. Even in SCT, only providing beginning of sentences is inadequate to compensate atypicalities in their creativity and imagination, and self-disclosure is difficult for many individuals with ASD. It is reported that many individuals with ASD often achieve a higher degree of task engagement through interactions with robots and that robotic systems may be useful in eliciting and promoting social communication such as self-disclosure for some individuals with ASD. There is a possibility that exemplification by android robots in place of human interviewers can result in a higher degree of task engagement for individuals with ASD. The objective of this study was to investigate whether additional exemplifications by android robots in the SCT can prompt self-disclosure for individuals with ASD. We compared the difference in disclosure statements and subjective emotion in the testing paper of the SCT in additional exemplification by an android robot and a human interviewer. In addition, we assessed the disclosure statements and subjective emotions in the SCT, for which exemplifications were written on testing paper to make the comparison. Our quantitative data suggested that exemplification by android robot promoted more self-disclosure, especially about the negative topic compared to exemplification by a human interviewer and that written on test paper. In addition, the level of participant embarrassment in response to exemplification by the android robot seemed to be lower compared to that in the human interviewer condition. In the assessment and support for individuals with ASD, eliciting self-disclosure is a pressing issue. It is hoped that the appropriate use of robots will lead to a better understanding and support for their application.

Android robots are employed in various fields. Many individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have the motivation and aptitude for using such robots. Interactions with these robots are structured to resemble social situations in which certain social behaviors can occur and to simulate daily life. Considering that individuals with ASD have strong likes and dislikes, ensuring not only the optimal appearance but also the optimal motion of robots is important to achieve smooth interaction and to draw out the potential of robotic interventions. We investigated whether individuals with ASD found it easier to talk to an android robot with little motion (i.e., only opening and closing its mouth during speech) or an android robot with much motion (i.e., in addition to opening and closing its mouth during speech, moving its eyes from side to side and up and down, blinking, deeply breathing, and turning or moving its head or body at random). This was a crossover study in which a total of 25 participants with ASD experienced mock interviews conducted by an android robot with much spontaneous facial and bodily motion and an android robot with little motion. We compared demographic data between participants who answered that the android robot with much motion was easier to talk to than android robot with little motion and those who answered the opposite. In addition, we investigated how each type of demographic data was related to participants' feeling of comfort in an interview setting with an android robot. Fourteen participants indicated that the android robot with little motion was easier to talk to than the robot with much motion, whereas 11 participants answered the opposite. There were significant differences between these two groups in the sensory sensitivity score, which reflects the tendency to show a low neurological threshold. In addition, we found correlations between the sensation seeking score, which reflects the tendency to show a high neurological threshold, and self-report ratings of comfort in each condition. These results provide preliminary support for the importance of setting the motion of an android robot considering the sensory traits of ASD.

Engineering robot personalities is a challenge of multiple folds. Every robot that interacts with humans is an individual physical presence that may require their own personality. Thus, robot personalities engineers face a problem that is the reverse of that of personality psychologists: robot personalities engineers need to make batches of identical robots into individual personalities, as oppose to formulating comprehensive yet parsimonious descriptions of individual personalities that already exist. The robot personality research so far has been fruitful in demonstrating the positive effects of robot personality but unfruitful in insights into how robot personalities can be engineered in significant quantities. To engineer robot personalities for mass-produced robots we need a generative personality model with a structure to encode a robot’s individual characteristics as personality traits and generate behaviour with inter- and intra-individual differences that reflect those characteristics. We propose a generative personality model shaped by goals as part of a personality AI for robots towards which we have been working, and we conducted tests to investigate how many individual personalities the model can practically support when it is used for expressing personalities via non-verbal behaviour on the heads of humanoid robots.

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a rare disease in the Japanese. The most common CFTR variant in Japanese CF patients is a large heterozygous deletion that can easily avoid detection by standard gene sequencing methods. We herein report a novel large heterozygous deletion in the CFTR gene in Japanese siblings with CF. A genetic analysis was performed in two patients (9-year-old boy and 5-month-old girl) who were clinically diagnosed with CF because of the positive result for the rapid fecal pancreatic elastase antigen test and the elevation of the sweat chloride concentration. In addition to conventional polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and direct sequencing, multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification (MLPA) was performed to check for a large deletion and duplication of the CFTR gene. Based on MLPA findings, the breakpoint of heterozygous deletion was identified by real-time quantitative PCR followed by the sequence of the amplified junction fragment. In MLPA, the numbers of the fragments corresponding to exons 1, 16, 17a, and 17b and 234 nt and 747 nt upstream from the translation initiation codon of exon 1 in the CFTR gene and exon 3 in the ASZ1 gene were reduced by almost half. The c.2908+1085_3367+260del7201 variant (exon 16-17b deletion) was identified in one allele. The other allele had a large 137,567-bp deletion from g.117,361,112 (ASZ1 3′ flanking region) to g.117,498,678 (CFTR intron 1) on chromosome 7. Since the deletion variant lacked the entire promoter region of CFTR, CFTR mRNA would not be transcribed from the allele, indicating it to be a novel pathogenic variant causing CF. As large mutations are frequently detected in Japanese CF patients, MPLA can be useful when searching for variants.

BackgroundPaclitaxel-induced peripheral neuropathy (PIPN) is a disabling side effect of paclitaxel with few effective preventive strategies. We aim to determine the efficacy of pharmacological and non-pharmacological neuroprotective interventions in preventing PIPN incidence.MethodsBiomedical literature databases were searched from years 2000 to 2021 for trials comparing neuroprotective interventions and control. Meta-analysis was performed using the random-effects model. The primary outcome was the incidence of PIPN.ResultsOf 24 relevant controlled trials, 14 were eligible for meta-analysis. Pooled results from seven non-pharmacological trials were associated with a statistically significant 48% relative reduction of PIPN risk with low heterogeneity. Conversely, pooled results from six pharmacological trials were associated with a significant 20% relative reduction of PIPN risk with moderate heterogeneity. Both pharmacological and non-pharmacological approaches appear effective in reducing PIPN incidence in the treatment arm compared to control (pooled RR < 1).ConclusionCurrent evidence suggests that both interventions may reduce PIPN risk. Non-pharmacological interventions appear more effective than pharmacological interventions.

The rapid expansion of online job interviews during the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to continue after the pandemic has subsided. These interviews are a significant barrier for individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). There is little evidence-based training for online job interviews for individuals with ASD, and the development of new trainings is expected. In an effort to facilitate online job interview skill acquisition for individuals with ASD, we developed a group-based online job interview training program using a virtual robot (GOT). In GOT, the interviewer and interviewee are projected as virtual robots on the screen. Five participants were grouped and performed the role of interviewee, interviewer, and evaluator. The participants performed all roles in a random order. Each session consisted of a first job interview session, feedback session, and second job interview session. The participants experienced 25 sessions. Before and after GOT, the participants underwent a mock online job interview with a human professional interviewer (MOH) to evaluate the effect of GOT. In total, 15 individuals with ASD took part in the study. The GOT improved self-confidence, motivation, the understanding of others' perspectives, verbal competence, non-verbal competence, and interview performance scores. There was also a significant increase in the recognition of the importance of the point of view of interviewers and evaluators after the second MOH compared to after the first MOH. Using a VR robot and learning the importance of interview skills by experiencing other perspectives (i.e., viewpoint of interviewer and evaluator) may have sustained their motivation and enabled greater self-confidence. Given the promising results of this study and to draw definitive conclusions regarding the efficacy of virtual reality (VR) robots for mock online job interview training, further studies with larger, more diverse samples of individuals with ASD using a longitudinal design are warranted.

The emotion expressions of social robots are some of the most important developments in recent studies on human-robot interactions (HRIs). Several research studies have been conducted to assess effective factors to improve the quality of emotion expression of the robots. In this study, we examined the effects of a robot's vertical oscillation and transition on the quality of its emotion expression, where the former indicates the periodic up/down movement of the body of the robot, while the latter indicates a one-time up or down movement. Short-term and long-term emotion expressions of the robot were studied independently for the four basic emotions described in the circumplex model of emotions: joy, anger, sadness, and relief. We designed an experiment with an adequate statistical power and minimum sample size of human subjects based on a priori power analysis. Human subjects were asked to evaluate the robot's emotion expressions by watching its video with/without vertical movement. The results of the experiment showed that for the long-term emotions, the speed of vertical oscillation corresponded to the degree of arousal of the emotion expression as noted in the circumplex model; this indicated that fast oscillations improved the emotion expression with a higher degree of arousal, such as joy and anger, while slow or no oscillations were more suited to emotions with a lower degree of arousal, such as sadness and relief. For the short-term emotions, the direction of the vertical transition corresponded to the degree of valence for most of the expressed emotions, while the speed of vertical oscillation reflected the degree of arousal. The findings of this study can be adopted in the development of conversational robots to enhance their emotion expression.

With fast and reliable international transportation, more people with different language backgrounds can interact now. As a result, the need for communicative agents fluent in several languages to assist those people is highlighted. The high cost of hiring human attendants fluent in several languages makes using social robots a more affordable alternative in international gatherings. A social robot capable of presenting a piece of information in more than one language at the same time to its audience is the goal of this line of study. However, the negative effect of background noise on speech comprehension in humans is well-established. Hence, presenting a piece of information in two different languages at the same time by the robot creates an adverse listening condition for both individuals listening to the speech of such a bilingual robot. In this study, we investigated whether manipulating the pitch and gender of the robot’s voice could affect human subjects’ memory of the presented information in the presence of background noise. The results indicate that the pitch and gender of the speaking voice do indeed affect our memory of the presented information. when a male voice was used, a higher pitch resulted in significantly better memory performance than a lower pitch. Contrarily, when a female voice was used, a lower pitch resulted in significantly better memory in participants than a higher pitch. Both male and female subjects performed significantly better with a female voice in a noisy background. In nutshell, the result of this study suggests using a female voice for robots in noisy conditions, as in the case of simultaneously speaking robots, can significantly improve the retrieval of presented information in human subjects.

In recent years, the demand for remote services has increased with concerns regarding the spread of infectious diseases and employees’ quality of life. Many attempts have been made to enable store staff to provide various services remotely via avatars displayed to on-site customers. However, the workload required on the part of service staff by the emerging new work style of operating avatar robots remains a concern. No study has compared the performance and perceived workload of the same staff working locally versus remotely via an avatar. In this study, we conducted an experiment to identify differences between the performance of in-person services and remote work through an avatar robot in an actual public space. The results showed that there were significant differences in the partial performance between working via an avatar and working locally, and we could not find significant difference in the overall performance. On the other hand, the perceived workload was significantly lower when the avatar robot was used. We also found that customers reacted differently to the robots and to the in-person participants. In addition, the workload perceived by operators in the robotic task was correlated with their personality and experience. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first investigation of both performance and workload in remote customer service through robotic avatars, and it has important implications for the implementation of avatar robots in service settings.

Communication apprehension (CA), defined as anxiety in oral communication, and anxiety in eye contact (AEC), defined as the discomfort felt in communication while being stared at by others, limit communication effectiveness. In this study, we examined whether using a teleoperated robot avatar in a video teleconference provides communication support to people with CA and AEC. We propose a robotic telecommunication system in which a user has two options to produce utterance for own responses in online interaction with interviewer i.e., either by a robot avatar that faces the interviewer, or by self. Two imagination-based experiments were conducted, in which a total of 400 participants were asked to watch videos for interview scenes with or without the proposed system; 200 participants for each experiment. The participants then evaluated their impressions by imagining that they were the interviewee. In the first experiment, a video conference with the proposed system was compared with an ordinary video conference, where the interviewer and interviewee faced each other. In the second experiment, it was compared with an ordinary video conference where the interviewer’s attentional focus was directed away from the interviewee. A significant decrease in the expected CA and AEC of participants with the proposed system was observed in both experiments, whereas a significant increase in the expected sense of being attended (SoBA) was observed in the second experiment. This study contributes to the literature in terms of examining the expected impact of using a teleoperated robot avatar for better video conferences, especially for supporting individuals with CA and AEC.

In this study, we implemented a model with which a robot expressed such complex emotions as heartwarming (e.g., happy and sad) or horror (fear and surprise) by its touches and experimentally investigated the effectiveness of the modeled touch behaviors. Robots that can express emotions through touching behaviors increase their interaction capabilities with humans. Although past studies achieved ways to express emotions through a robot’s touch, such studies focused on expressing such basic emotions as happiness and sadness and downplayed these complex emotions. Such studies only proposed a model that expresses these emotions by touch behaviors without evaluations. Therefore, we conducted the experiment to evaluate the model with participants. In the experiment, they evaluated the perceived emotions and empathies from a robot’s touch while they watched a video stimulus with the robot. Our results showed that the touch timing before the climax received higher evaluations than touch timing after for both the scary and heartwarming videos.

Abstract Background Although fatigue is a common and distressing symptom in cancer survivors, the mechanism of fatigue is not fully understood. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the relation between the fatigue and mindfulness of breast cancer survivors using anxiety, depression, pain, loneliness, and sleep disturbance as mediators. Methods Path analysis was performed to examine direct and indirect associations between mindfulness and fatigue. Participants were breast cancer survivors who visited a breast surgery department at a university hospital in Japan for hormonal therapy or regular check-ups after treatment. The questionnaire measured cancer-related-fatigue, mindfulness, anxiety, depression, pain, loneliness, and sleep disturbance. Demographic and clinical characteristics were collected from medical records. Results Two-hundred and seventy-nine breast cancer survivors were registered, of which 259 answered the questionnaire. Ten respondents with incomplete questionnaire data were excluded, resulting in 249 participants for the analyses. Our final model fit the data well (goodness of fit index = .993; adjusted goodness of fit index = .966; comparative fit index = .999; root mean square error of approximation = .016). Mindfulness, anxiety, depression, pain, loneliness, and sleep disturbance were related to fatigue, and mindfulness had the most influence on fatigue (β = − .52). Mindfulness affected fatigue not only directly but also indirectly through anxiety, depression, pain, loneliness, and sleep disturbance. Conclusions The study model helps to explain the process by which mindfulness affects fatigue. Our results suggest that mindfulness has both direct and indirect effects on the fatigue of breast cancer survivors and that mindfulness can be used to more effectively reduce their fatigue. It also suggests that health care professionals should be aware of factors such as anxiety, depression, pain, loneliness, and sleep disturbance in their care for fatigue of breast cancer survivors. Trial registration This study was registered in the University Hospital Medical Information Network Clinical Trials Registry (UMIN number. 000027720 ) on June 12, 2017.

When designing rule-based dialogue systems, the need for the creation of an elaborate design by the designer is a challenge. One way to reduce the cost of creating content is to generate utterances from data collected in an objective and reproducible manner. This study focuses on rule-based dialogue systems using survey data and, more specifically, on opinion dialogue in which the system models the user. In the field of opinion dialogue, there has been little study on the topic of transition methods for modeling users while maintaining their motivation to engage in dialogue. To model them, we adopted information content. Our contribution includes the design of a rule-based dialogue system that does not require an elaborate design. We also reported an appropriate topic transition method based on information content. This is confirmed by the influence of the user’s personality characteristics. The content of the questions gives the user a sense of the system’s intention to understand them. We also reported the possibility that the system’s rational intention contributes to the user’s motivation to engage in dialogue with the system.

We introduce a minimal design approach to manufacture an infant-like robot for interactive doll therapy that provides emotional interactions for older people with dementia. Our approach stimulates their imaginations and then facilitates positive engagement with the robot by just expressing the most basic elements of humanlike features. Based on this approach, we developed HIRO, a baby-sized robot with an abstract body representation and no facial features. The recorded voice of a real human infant emitted by robots enhances the robot’s human-likeness and facilitates positive interaction between older adults and the robot. Although we did not find any significant difference between HIRO and an infant-like robot with a smiling face, a field study showed that HIRO was accepted by older adults with dementia and facilitated positive interaction by stimulating their imagination. We also discuss the importance of a minimal design approach in elderly care during post–COVID-19 world.

The perception of putative pheromones or social odors (PPSO) in humans is a widely debated topic because the published results seem ambiguous. Our research aimed to evaluate how cross-modal processing of PPSO and gender voice can affect the behavioral and psychophysiological states of the subject during a listening task with a bodily contact medium, and how these effects could be gender related. Before the experimental session, three embodied media, were exposed to volatilized estratetraenol (Estr), 5α-androst-16-en-3 α-ol (Andr), and Vaseline oil. The experimental session consisted in listening to a story that were transmitted, with a male or female voice, by the communicative medium via a Bluetooth system during a listening task, recorded through 64-active channel electroencephalography (EEG). The sense of co-presence and social presence, elicited by the medium, showed how the established relationship with the medium was gender dependent and modulated by the PPSO. In particular, Andr induced greater responses related to co-presence. The gender of the participants was related to the co-presence desire, where women imagined higher medium co-presence than men. EEG findings seemed to be more responsive to the PPSO–gender voice interaction, than behavioral results. The mismatch between female PPSO and male voice elicited the greatest cortical flow of information. In the case of the Andr–male voice condition, the trained model appeared to assign more relevance to the flow of information to the right frontotemporal regions (involved in odor recognition memory and social behavior). The Estr–male voice condition showed activation of the bilateral frontoparietal network, which is linked to cognitive control, cognitive flexibility, and auditory consciousness. The model appears to distinguish the dissonance condition linked to Andr matched with a female voice: it highlights a flow of information to the right occipital lobe and to the frontal pole. The PPSO could influence the co-presence judgements and EEG response. The results seem suggest that could be an implicit pattern linked to PPSO-related gender differences and gender voice.

We examined the influence of groups of agents and the type of avatar on movement interference. In addition, we studied the synchronization of the subject with the agent. For that, we conducted experiments utilizing human subjects to examine the influence of one, two, or three agents, as well as human or robot avatars, and finally, the agent moving biologically or linearly. We found the main effect on movement interference was the number of agents; namely, three agents had significantly more influence on movement interference than one agent. These results suggest that the number of agents is more influential on movement interference than other avatar characteristics. For the synchronization, the main effect of the type of the agent was revealed, showing that the human agent kept more synchronization compared to the robotic agent. In this experiment, we introduced an additional paradigm on the interference which we called synchronization, discovering that a group of agents is able to influence this behavioral level as well.