PLENARY SPEAKERS

Using robots to understand human cognition

Prof. Agnieszka Wykowska, Italian Institute of Technology

As robots are believed to soon populate human environments, they have received enthusiastic support in the scientific community. Most research aims at designing robots for assisting humans in daily lives, healthcare, or elderly care. However, there is also a less explored way of using robots – robots as tools to understand human cognition. In my lab, we take this approach, examining human cognitive mechanisms in social interaction. In this talk, I will present the work from my lab where we have examined conditions under which people treat robots as intentional agents and attribute mental states to them, as well as consequences that such attributions have for other cognitive processes. I will also discuss how attentional orienting, sensorimotor processes, and sense of agency unfold in interaction with humanoid robot partners. I will discuss these results in a broader context of using robots at the service of psychological research.

Professor Agnieszka Wykowska is the head of the unit “Social Cognition in Human-Robot Interaction” at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), in Genoa, Italy. She is also the Coordinator of the Center for Human Technologies, at the IIT. Her background is Cognitive Neuroscience (Master’s degree in Neuro-Cognitive Psychology from the Ludwig Maximilian University Munich in 2006). She obtained a PhD in Psychology (2008) from the same university. In 2016 she was awarded the ERC Starting grant “InStance: Intentional Stance for Social Attunement”. Between 2022 and 2024 she served in the role of President of the European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (ESCAN). She is Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Social Robotics. She is also board member of Association of ERC Grantees and a delegate to the European Research Area (ERA) Forum – an EU expert group shaping EU science policies. In 2023 she was awarded the Hans-Fischer Senior Fellowship from the Institute of Advanced Studies at the Technical University Munich to lead a research group “Human Cognition in Neuroengineering”.