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The human likeness dimension of the “uncanny valley hypothesis”: behavioral and functional MRI findings
Open accessAbstract
The uncanny valley hypothesis (Mori, 1970) predicts differential experience of negative and positive affect as a function of human likeness. Affective experience of humanlike robots and computer-generated characters (avatars) dominates "uncanny" research, but findings are inconsistent. Importantly, it is unknown how objects are actually perceived along the hypothesis' dimension of human likeness (DOH), defined in terms of human physical similarity. To examine whether the DOH can also be defined in terms of effects of categorical perception (CP), stimuli from morph continua with controlled differences in physical human likeness between avatar and human faces as endpoints were presented. Two behavioral studies found a sharp category boundary along the DOH and enhanced visual discrimination (i.e., CP) of fine-grained differences between pairs of faces at the category boundary. Discrimination was better for face pairs presenting category change in the human-to-avatar than avatar-to-human direction along the DOH. To investigate brain representation of physical change and category change along the DOH, an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging study used the same stimuli in a pair-repetition priming paradigm. Bilateral mid-fusiform areas and a different right mid-fusiform area were sensitive to physical change within the human and avatar categories, respectively, whereas entirely different regions were sensitive to the human-to-avatar (caudate head, putamen, thalamus, red nucleus) and avatar-to-human (hippocampus, amygdala, mid-insula) direction of category change. These findings show that Mori's DOH definition does not reflect subjective perception of human likeness and suggest that future "uncanny" studies consider CP and the DOH's category structure in guiding experience of non-human objects.
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“In practice, previous uncanny valley studies have employed at least 11 evenly distributed human-likeness steps along the human-likeness continuum (e.g., Looser and Wheatley, 2010; Cheetham et al., 2011, 2014).”
From A review of empirical evidence on different uncanny valley hypotheses: support for perceptual mismatch as one road to the valley of eeriness (2015) · cites this paper as Cheetham et al., 2011
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“Similarly as humans and other primates, humans and anthropomorphic characters share many fundamental similarities that could place them in the same overarching category of humanlike entities (cf. Campbell et al., 1997; Cheetham et al., 2011).”
From A review of empirical evidence on different uncanny valley hypotheses: support for perceptual mismatch as one road to the valley of eeriness (2015) · cites this paper as Cheetham et al., 2011
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Metadata
- Authors
- Cheetham, M.
- Affiliations
- University of Zurich (CH)
- Corresponding author
- Cheetham, Marcus
- ORCID
- Cheetham, Marcus
- Venue
- Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Frontiers Media SA
- Published
- 2011
- Volume
- 5
- Pages
- 126-126
- ISSN
- 1662-5161 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3223398
- OpenAlex
- W2032460447
- Cited by
- 176
- References
- 111
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 18 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 14 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 19 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 13 · 2016: 16 · 2015: 19 · 2014: 6 · 2013: 5 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 1.95
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich) (acceptedVersion, other-oa)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich)
- Funders
- European Commission (27731)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Aesthetic Perception and Analysis
- Keywords
- human-likeness, categorical perception, face perception, human avatars, physical similarity, category boundaries, fusiform gyrus, amygdala, hippocampus, emotional experience
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