A reappraisal of the Uncanny Valley: Categorical perception or frequency-based sensitization?

Uncanny Valley
Categorical Perception
Cognition
Experimental

Burleigh, T. J., & Schoenherr, J. R. (2015). A reappraisal of the uncanny valley: categorical perception or frequency-based sensitization?. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1488. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01488

Authors

Tyler Burleigh

Jordan Schoenherr

Published

January 2015

Doi

Abstract

The uncanny valley (UCV) hypothesis describes a non-linear relationship between perceived human-likeness and affective response. The “uncanny valley” refers to an intermediate level of human-likeness that is associated with strong negative affect. Recent studies have suggested that the uncanny valley might result from the categorical perception of human-like stimuli during identification. When presented with stimuli sharing human-like traits, participants attempt to segment the continuum in “human” and “non-human” categories. Due to the ambiguity of stimuli located at a category boundary, categorization difficulty gives rise to a strong, negative affective response. Importantly, researchers who have studied the UCV in terms of categorical perception have focused on categorization responses rather than affective ratings. In the present study, we examined whether the negative affect associated with the UCV might be explained in terms of an individual’s degree of exposure to stimuli. In two experiments, we tested a frequency-based model against a categorical perception model using a category-learning paradigm. We manipulated the frequency of exemplars that were presented to participants from two categories during a training phase. We then examined categorization and affective responses functions, as well as the relationship between categorization and affective responses. Supporting previous findings, categorization responses suggested that participants acquired novel category structures that reflected a category boundary. These category structures appeared to influence affective ratings of eeriness. Crucially, participants’ ratings of eeriness were additionally affected by exemplar frequency. Taken together, these findings suggest that the UCV is determined by both categorical properties as well as the frequency of individual exemplars retained in memory.

Important figure

FIGURE 12: Test categorization response accuracy in the unequal frequency, unequal distribution condition. Stimulus values correspond to stimuli selected from the training range (i.e., stimuli 3–13). Error bars represent 1 standard error of the mean (N = 60).