Prosody's Impact on Early Social Preferences: An Infant-Robot Exploration

• Project/Area Number: 24K16785
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Basic Section 10010:Social psychology-related
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: Li Jiarui 東京大学, ニューロインテリジェンス国際研究機構, 特任研究員 (10966807)
• Project Period (FY): 2024-04-01 – 2027-03-31
• Project Status: Granted (Fiscal Year 2024)
• Budget Amount: ¥4,290,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,300,000、Indirect Cost: ¥990,000); Fiscal Year 2026: ¥910,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000、Indirect Cost: ¥210,000); Fiscal Year 2025: ¥2,080,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,600,000、Indirect Cost: ¥480,000); Fiscal Year 2024: ¥1,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000、Indirect Cost: ¥300,000)
• Keywords: Early social preference / infant-robot interaction

Outline of Research at the Start

Prosody is crucial for infants' understanding of communication, and social engagement. Computational models will be employed to uncover personalized prosodic patterns between infants and caregivers, which will be applied to robot experiments to understand the impact of prosody to social preference.