Week 4 Reading － Phoebe Shang: the missing piece in this human-robot interaction

At the end of the article about human-robot interaction, the authors utter a warning that as the rate of technological change has been increasing exponentially for centuries, developmental psychologists need to be agile and future oriented in their investigations if they are to remain relevant. Speaking of relevance, however, I find a constantly missing piece in the study about humanoid robots – the role played by adults/parents in at least three aspects. First, parents present a ready resource of access to and monitoring on the young children’s interaction with robots. During this process, the second dimension of adults’ effects manifests itself in that kids learn from their parents by copying and imitating. Third, despite the vastly varied backdrops of their growth, research of today’s adults will still shed light on that of the future generations of grown-ups.