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Agnieszka Wykowska

Principal Investigator
Senior Researcher Tenured - Principal Investigator
Social cognition in human-robot interaction
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About

Professor Agnieszka Wykowska leads the unit S4HRI “Social Cognition in Human-Robot Interaction” at the Italian Institute of Technology (Genoa, Italy), where she is also the Coordinator of CHT (the Center for Human Technologies). At IIT, she is also member of the Board of the Scientific Director. In addition, she is an adjunct professor of Engineering Psychology at the Luleå University of Technology as well as visiting professor at the University of Manchester. She graduated in neuro-cognitive psychology (2006, LMU Munich), obtained PhD in psychology (2008) and the German “Habilitation” (2013) from LMU Munich. In 2016 she was awarded the ERC Starting grant “InStance": "Intentional Stance for Social Attunement”. In 2024, she was awarded the ERC Proof-of-Concept grant "RONIN": Robot Training Independence. She is Editor-in-Chief of IJSR (International Journal of Social Robotics). Between 2022 and 2024 she has served as  President of ESCAN (European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience),. She is member of ELLIS (European Lab for Learning and Intelligent Systems) and core member of Association of ERC Grantees. She is also a delegate to the ERA Forum (European Research Area), representing stakeholder's group "Individual researchers and innovators". In her research, she combines cognitive neuroscience methods with human-robot interaction in order to understand the human brain mechanisms in interaction with natural and artificial agents. Email address: agnieszka.wykowska@iit.it 

Website of the ERC project: https://www.instanceproject.eu

Most representative  publications:

Navare, U. P., Ciardo, F., Kompatsiari, K., De Tommaso, D., & Wykowska, A. (2024). When performing actions with robots, attribution of intentionality affects the sense of joint agency. Science Robotics, 9, eadj3665: https://www.science.org/stoken/author-tokens/ST-1961/full

Marchesi, S., De Tommaso, D., Kompatsiari, K., Wu, Y., Wykowska, A. (2024). Tools and methods to study and replicate experiments addressing human social cognition in interactive scenarios. Behavior Research Methods and Instrumentation. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-024-02434-z

Ciardo, F., De Tommaso, D., Wykowska, A. (2022). Human-like behavioural variability blurs the distinction between a human and a machine in a nonverbal Turing test. Science Robotics, 7, eabo 1241. http://doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.abo1241

Marchesi, S., De Tommaso, D., Perez-Osorio, J., Wykowska A. (2022). Belief in sharing the same phenomenological experience increases the likelihood of adopting the intentional stance towards a humanoid robot. Technology, Mind and Behavior, 3(3): https://doi.org/10.1037/tmb0000072

Belkaid, M., Kompatsiari, K., De Tommaso, D., Zablith, I., & Wykowska, A. (2021). Mutual gaze with a robot affects human neural activity and delays decision-making processes. Science Robotics, 6, eabc5044, http://doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.abc5044

Bossi, F., Willemse, C., Cavazza, J., Marchesi, S., Murino, V., Wykowska, A. (2020). The human brain reveals resting state activity patterns that are predictive of biases in attitudes towards robots. Science Robotics, 5:46, eabb6652, http://doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.abb6652

Kompatsiari, K., Ciardo, F., Wykowska, A. (2022). To follow or not to follow your gaze: The interplay between strategic control and the eye contact effect on gaze-induced attention orienting. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 151: 121-136, https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001074

Wykowska, A. (2021). Robots as mirrors of the human mind. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 30 (1), 34-40, https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721420978609



Education

Title: Habilitation in Psychology
Institute: Ludwig Maximilian University Munich (LMU)
Location: Munich
Country: Germany
From: 2008 To: 2013

Title: PhD in Psychology
Institute: Ludwig Maximilian University Munich (LMU)
Location: Munich
Country: Germany
From: 2006 To: 2008

Title: M.Sc. in Neuro-Cognitive Psychology
Institute: Ludwig Maximilian University Munich (LMU)
Location: Munich
Country: Germany
From: 2004 To: 2006

Experience External

Title: Full Professor, Chair of Engineering Psychology
Institute: Lulea University of Technology (LTU)
Location: Lulea
Country: Sweden
From: 2016 To: 2016

Title: Privatdozent and team leader
Institute: Ludwig Maximilian University Munich (LMU)
Location: Munich
Country: Germany
From: 2013 To: 2016

Title: Senior Researcher and Project Leader
Institute: Technical University Munich (TUM)
Location: Munich
Country: Germany
From: 2013 To: 2016

All Publications
2024
Roselli C., Wykowska A.
Artificial agents as tools to explore the (human) Self
European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (ESCAN)
Abstract Report Conference
2024
Roselli C., Marchesi S., Russi N.S., De Tommaso D., Wykowska A.
A Study on Social Inclusion of Humanoid Robots: A Novel Embodied Adaptation of the Cyberball Paradigm
International Journal of Social Robotics, vol. 16, (no. 4), pp. 671-686
Article Journal
2024
Ciupinska K., Marchesi S., Abbo G. A., Belpaeme T., Wykowska A.
AwarePrompt: Using Diffusion Models to Create Methods for Measuring Value-Aware AI Architectures.
16th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence, vol. 3, pp. 1436 - 1443
Article Conference
2024
Marchesi S., Spatola N., Wykowska A.
Delineation and operationalization of the concept of the Intentional Stance
Intentional Stance Towards Humanoid Robots, Publisher: Springer Cham
Book Chapter Book
2024
O'Reilly Z., Roselli C., Wykowska A.
Does exposure to technological knowledge modulate the adoption of the intentional stance towards humanoid robots in children?
PsyArXiv Preprints
Article E-print Archive