Towards the Impact of Negative Attitudes towards Robots on the Correlation of Anthropomorphism and Cognitive Load

This paper explores the association of anthropomorphism and cognitive load with respect to the influence of negative attitudes towards robots. The study consists in a cooperative pick-and-place task, where participants are required to repeatedly and alternatingly put a Lego brick onto one of two trays to be picked up and returned by a robot arm. The task is varied by whether or not participants had to remember an 8-digit number inducing extraneous cognitive load (within-subjects factor). Results show significant correlations of some dimensions of anthropomorphism and perceived cognitive load. However, dividing participants in groups with different negative attitudes towards robots, a significant difference of this association is found. This finding puts prior results on the dependency of anthropomorphism of robots and cognitive load into perspective and more research on the underlying cognitive processes is suggested.