The Uncanny Valley Explained 172
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Soulskill
from the japan's-plan-for-scaring-the-rest-of-us-to-death dept.
from the japan's-plan-for-scaring-the-rest-of-us-to-death dept.
ColdWetDog writes "Scientists now believe they've figured out what causes the uncanny valley response. They compared functional MRI scans of volunteers watching two different types of videos: those showing human-appearing androids, and those showing the humans that the robots were created to mimic. 'The results suggest that the uneasiness we feel could be caused by a "perceptual mismatch between appearance and motion."' Basically, the brain seemed to react in a strongly negative manner when the robotic motions of the android didn't match its human-like appearance."
Old News (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Illness (Score:4, Interesting)
I fall somewhere on the autism spectrum (officially diagnosed, before someone jumps me for that).
I don't experience the Uncanny Valley effect, and this is the probable evolutionary explanation for it that I've come up with. If it doesn't "look right", it might be a corpse instead of a dead human, or carrying a disease, both of which are possibilities that would explain why the response to Uncanny Valley is a flinch instead of curiosity.
On the other hand, I've been told many times that I myself trigger the Uncanny Valley effect, by virtue of my behavior...
Asperger's syndrome can cause the uncanny valley (Score:5, Interesting)
As an Aspie who has dedicated a large proportion of my adult life trying to be accepted as "normal" by people, I can sympathise with the robots.
When somebody smiles broadly at me, I have to "manually" trigger my (pretty natural-looking) smile, but there is a small delay before my returning smile kicks in. In that fraction of a second, the person smiling at me subconciously realises that something is not quite right, and their smile fades slightly.
So I'll forever be associated with the notion that I am odd, weird, strange, whatever, because no matter how hard I try (and I'm a pretty good actor), I will never come close to having natural charisma. It's not all bad news though - I've built up a group of friends over the years who appreciate me despite my eccentricities, and I have got enough "game" to go out and have a reasonable chance of finding a new girlfriend on any given night. But it wasn't easy to get to that stage, and required a lot of introspection and acting skill.
One way to escape the uncanny valley is to spend a while in a completely different culture, where people expect you to be different and strange, and do not read negative interpretations into tiny social cues. Asia is good.
Mimes (Score:4, Interesting)