image: The five monkey faces (left to right): wireframe, greyscale, furless, naturalistic, and real-life footage. Four expressions (top to bottom): neutral, fear grin, lip smacking, threat. view more
Credit: Siebert et al., eNeuro 2020
Monkeys can overcome their aversion to animated monkeys through a more realistic avatar, according to research recently published in eNeuro.
Humans feel more comfortable toward life-like humanoid robots, but if a robot gets too life-like, it can become creepy. This "uncanny valley" effect plagues monkeys, too, which becomes a problem when scientists use animated monkey faces to study social behavior. However, monkeys overcome the uncanny valley when presented with a sufficiently realistic monkey avatar created using movie industry animation technology.
Siebert et al. compared how Rhesus monkeys reacted toward five types of monkey faces: video footage from real monkeys, a natural looking avatar with fur and facial details, a furless avatar, a greyscale avatar, and a wireframe face. The monkeys looked at the wireframe face but avoided looking at the furless and greyscale avatars, showing the uncanny valley effect at work. However, the natural looking avatar with fur overcame this effect. The monkeys looked at the model and made social facial expressions, comparable to how they would act around real monkeys. Using this type of avatar will make social cognition studies more standardized and replicable.
###
Manuscript title: A Naturalistic Dynamic Monkey Head Avatar Elicits Species-Typical Reactions and Overcomes the Uncanny Valley
Please contact media@sfn.org for full-text PDF and to join SfN's journals media list.
About eNeuro
eNeuro is an online, open-access journal published by the Society for Neuroscience. Established in 2014, eNeuro publishes a wide variety of content, including research articles, short reports, reviews, commentaries and opinions.
About The Society for Neuroscience
The Society for Neuroscience is the world's largest organization of scientists and physicians devoted to understanding the brain and nervous system. The nonprofit organization, founded in 1969, now has nearly 37,000 members in more than 90 countries and over 130 chapters worldwide.
Journal
eNeuro