Psychology & Child Development Professor Jennifer Jipson mentioned in Science News Magazine Article
Jennifer Jipson, associate professor in the Psychology & Child Development Department was mentioned on Jan. 29, 2011 in a Science News Magazine article, “Meet the Robots: Social robots take baby steps toward humanlike smarts,” which discussed interaction between children and robots with humanlike traits.
Jipson conducted a study with a colleague in 2007 called “Robots and rodents: Children’s inferences about living and non-living kinds.” The study found that 52 preschoolers between the ages of three and five who saw videos of an adult playing with a robotic dog thought the robot had thoughts, feelings and the ability to see, without any indication that the dog had biological traits such as the ability to eat or sleep.
It appeared that the children concluded that the dog had psychological, but lacked biological, traits.
“Children truly seem to reason about social robots in unique ways,” Jipson said. She said it is likely that people of all ages will create new ways to think about lifelike robots.
Jipson currently teaches three courses within the psychology and child development department, including Infant and Toddler Development, Development Issues in Education, and Children, Adolescent and Technology.
The full article is available here: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/68685/title/Meet_the_Growbots