Featured Scholar: Karl MacDorman, PhD
Associate Professor, IU School of Informatics
Director, Android Science Center
Karl MacDorman's research concerns developing androids (very human-looking robots) as controlled experimental apparatuses and as testbeds for theories about human brains and behavior. His advances in developing more humanlike androids are being used to better understand the cognitive mechanisms underlying social interaction.
A human-looking robot is able to elicit the kinds of social responses that only people were able to elicit before. It has the potential to contribute to cognitive science research by serving as an experimental apparatus that can be more precisely controlled than any human actor. This permits the testing of hypotheses that cannot be tested by other means.
Androids have a number of potential applications. They can serve as patient simulators to help doctors, nurses and dentists better learn human responses and better care for patients. Teachers can learn how their students learn, and students can gain the communication skills they need for their professional careers. Even police officers can learn how to better "read" the people they question and discover the truth.
Professor MacDorman's work to develop future generations of androids that can be used to study human motivations and interactions is another example of how IU Indianapolis's faculty members are TRANSLATING their RESEARCH INTO PRACTICE.
Selected Publications in IU Indianapolis ScholarWorks
With several research works contributed to IU Indianapolis's free, open access repository, Professor MacDorman has made translational research knowledge available to professionals, researchers, students, and communities around the world.
Chattopadhyay, D., & MacDorman, K. F. (2016). Familiar faces rendered strange: Why inconsistent realism drives characters into the uncanny valley. Journal of Vision, 16(11), 7–7. https://hdl.handle.net/1805/10990
Srinivas, Preethi, Karl F. MacDorman, and Himalaya Patel. (2013, April 5). Uncanny valley and motor empathy. Poster session presented at IU Indianapolis Research Day 2013, Indianapolis, Indiana. https://hdl.handle.net/1805/7125
Faiola, A., Ho, C. C., Tarrant, M. D., & MacDorman, K. F. (2011). The aesthetic dimensions of US and South Korean responses to web home pages: A cross-cultural comparison. Intl. Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 27(2), 131-150. https://hdl.handle.net/1805/6151
Karl F. MacDorman, Chin-Chang Ho, Amy S. Lu, Wade J. Mitchell, Himalaya Patel, and Preethi Srinivas, Paul W. Schermerhorn, and Matthias Scheutz. (2011, April 8). The appearance, speech, and motion of synthetic humans influences our empathy toward them. Poster session presented at IU Indianapolis Research Day 2016, Indianapolis, Indiana. https://hdl.handle.net/1805/10931
Preethi Srinivas, Himalaya Patel, Chin-Chang Ho, and Karl F. MacDorman. (2011, April 8). The human likeness of computer-generated characters predicts altercentric intrusion during a counting task (Alternative title: An uncanny valley of visual perspective taking: A study of the effects of character human likeness and eeriness on altercentric intrusion during a counting task). Poster session presented at IU Indianapolis Research Day 2016, Indianapolis, Indiana. https://hdl.handle.net/1805/10635
Karl F. MacDorman, Prathik Gadde, Chin-Chang Ho, Wade J. Mitchell, Paul W. Schermerhorn, and Matthias Scheutz. (2010, April 9). Probing People's Attitudes and Behaviors Using Humanlike Agents. Poster session presented at IU Indianapolis Research Day 2010, Indianapolis, Indiana. https://hdl.handle.net/1805/11518
MacDorman, K. F., Green, R. D., Ho, C.-C., & Koch, C. T. (2009). Too real for comfort? Uncanny responses to computer generated faces. Computers in Human Behavior, 25(3), 695–710. https://hdl.handle.net/1805/10279
Faiola, A., & Macdorman, K. F. (2008). The Influence of Holistic and Analytic Cognitive Styles on Online Information Design: Toward a communication theory of cultural cognitive design. Information, Community & Society, 11(3), 348-374. https://hdl.handle.net/1805/6129