Yasuhiro Kanakogi

Rudimentary sympathy in preverbal infants: preference for others in distress.

Despite its essential role in human coexistence, the developmental origins and progression of sympathy in infancy are not yet fully understood. We show that preverbal 10-month-olds manifest sympathetic responses, evinced in their preference for attacked others according to their evaluations of the respective roles of victim, aggressor, and neutral party. In Experiment 1, infants viewing an aggressive social interaction between a victim and an aggressor exhibited preference for the victim. In Experiment 2, when comparing the victim and the aggressor to a neutral object, infants preferred the victim and avoided the aggressor. These findings indicate that 10-month-olds not only evaluate the roles of victims and aggressors in interactions but also show rudimentary sympathy toward others in distress based on that evaluation. This simple preference may function as a foundation for full-fledged sympathetic behavior later on.

Infant's action skill dynamically modulates parental action demonstration in the dyadic interaction.

When interacting with infants, human adults modify their behaviours in an exaggerated manner. Previous studies have demonstrated that infant-directed modification affects the infants behaviour. However, little is known about how infant-directed modification is elicited during infant-parent interaction. We investigated whether and how the infants behaviour affects the mothers action during an interaction. We recorded three-dimensional information of cup movements while mothers demonstrated a cup-nesting task during interaction with their infants aged 11 to 13 months. Analyses revealed that spatial characteristics of the mothers task demonstration clearly changed depending on the infants object manipulation. In particular, the variance in the distance that the cup was moved decreased after the infants cup nesting and increased after the infants task-irrelevant manipulation (e.g. cup banging). This pattern was not observed for mothers with 6- to 8-month-olds, who do not have the fine motor skill to perform the action. These results indicate that the infants action skill dynamically affects the infant-directed action and suggest that the mother is sensitive to the infants potential to learn a novel action. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNS2IHwLIhg&feature=youtu.be.

Preverbal infants affirm third-party interventions that protect victims from aggressors

Protective interventions by a third party on the behalf of others are generally admired, and as such are associated with our notions of morality, justice and heroism1–4. Indeed, stories involving such third-party interventions have pervaded popular culture throughout recorded human history, in myths, books and movies. The current developmental picture is that we begin to engage in this type of intervention by preschool age. For instance, 3-year-old children intervene in harmful interactions to protect victims from bullies5, and furthermore, not only punish wrongdoers but also give priority to helping the victim6. It remains unknown, however, when we begin to affirm such interventions performed by others. Here we reveal these developmental origins in 6- and 10-month old infants (N = 132). After watching aggressive interactions involving a third-party agent who either interfered or did not, 6-month-old infants preferred the former. Subsequent experiments confirmed the psychological processes underlying such choices: 6-month-olds regarded the interfering agent to be protecting the victim from the aggressor, but only older infants affirmed such an intervention after considering the intentions of the interfering agent. These findings shed light upon the developmental trajectory of perceiving, understanding and performing protective third-party interventions, suggesting that our admiration for and emphasis upon such acts — so prevalent in thousands of stories across human cultures — is rooted within the preverbal infant’s mind.

Building a responsive teacher: how temporal contingency of gaze interaction influences word learning with virtual tutors

Animated pedagogical agents are lifelike virtual characters designed to augment learning. A review of developmental psychology literature led to the hypothesis that the temporal contingency of such agents would promote human learning. We developed a Pedagogical Agent with Gaze Interaction (PAGI), an experimental animated pedagogical agent that engages in gaze interaction with students. In this study, university students learned words of a foreign language, with temporally contingent PAGI (live group) or recorded version of PAGI (recorded group), which played pre-recorded sequences from live sessions. The result revealed that students in the live group scored considerably better than those in the recorded group. The finding indicates that incorporating temporal contingency of gaze interaction from a pedagogical agent has positive effect on learning.

Social Appearance of Virtual Agent and Temporal Contingency Effect

In our previous study, we developed Pedagogical Agent with Gaze Interaction (PAGI), an anthropomorphic animated pedagogical agent that engages in gaze interaction with students. Using PAGI, we revealed that temporal contingency from virtual agents facilitate learning (temporal contingency effect), and proposed two hypotheses that may explain the result; 1) temporal contingency reduces extraneous cognitive load related to visual search, 2) temporal contingency prime social stance in learners which enhances learning. To assess more deeply into this matter, we tested two critical features of the agent, saliency and socialness. Two arrow shaped agents, of which differed in saliency, were employed. Apart from the appearance of the agents, the experimental design was identical to the previous study. University students learned words of a foreign language, with temporally contingent agent or recorded version of the agent, which played pre-recorded sessions from the contingent agents. From the result we gained evidence supporting the second hypothesis. Non-social agents did not trigger temporal contingency effect.