人造顔の知覚(顔を見る,顔を思う,顔をつくる-顔知覚研究の行方-,2005年度 第2回フォーラム)

抄録

Artificially human faces such as robotic faces, dolls' faces, computer graphic (CG) images of faces, and cartoon faces are perceived as human faces. We rarely, however, confuse the artificial faces with the faces of real human individuals (natural faces). This suggests that our visual system involves mechanisms that are sensitive to the realism of faces (i.e. similarity of an artificial face to the natural face) and enable us to distinguish between artificial and natural faces. In past face perception research, researchers have ignored investigating how realism influences the perception of the face. In this article, a research strategy to investigate Mori's (1970, Energy, 7, 33-35) 'uncanny valley', a hypothesis that people will have an unpleasant impression of a robot that has an almost, but not perfectly, realistic human appearance, is shown to demonstrate that realism can be an interesting independent variable in the face perception study.