Mutual gaze with a robot affects human neural activity and delays decision-making processes.

In most everyday life situations, the brain needs to engage not only in making decisions but also in anticipating and predicting the behavior of others. In such contexts, gaze can be highly informative about others' intentions, goals, and upcoming decisions. Here, we investigated whether a humanoid robot's gaze (mutual or averted) influences the way people strategically reason in a social decision-making context. Specifically, participants played a strategic game with the robot iCub while we measured their behavior and neural activity by means of electroencephalography (EEG). Participants were slower to respond when iCub established mutual gaze before their decision, relative to averted gaze. This was associated with a higher decision threshold in the drift diffusion model and accompanied by more synchronized EEG alpha activity. In addition, we found that participants reasoned about the robot's actions in both conditions. However, those who mostly experienced the averted gaze were more likely to adopt a self-oriented strategy, and their neural activity showed higher sensitivity to outcomes. Together, these findings suggest that robot gaze acts as a strong social signal for humans, modulating response times, decision threshold, neural synchronization, as well as choice strategies and sensitivity to outcomes. This has strong implications for all contexts involving human-robot interaction, from robotics to clinical applications.

Factors associated with suicidal ideation disclosure: Results from a large population-based study.

BACKGROUND: It is crucial for clinicians and researchers to understand the factors associated with the disclosure of suicidal ideation. Describing the characteristics of those who do not disclose their suicidal ideation or who disclose their ideation only to close others, to health professionals or to both may help researchers and clinicians in their preventive efforts to treat persons at risk for suicidal behavior. METHODS: The sample was drawn from a large cross-sectional survey (n=22,138) on mental health in France. The analyses were based on the 4,156 persons (17.1%) who endorsed lifetime suicidal ideation with or without a history of suicide attempt and who indicated whether and to whom they disclosed their ideation. Socio-demographics, current mental disorders, and social connectedness were assessed. RESULTS: Half of those with suicidal ideation had not shared their ideation with anyone, 6.3% did so with health professionals only, 20% with friends or family only, and 20% with both healthcare professionals and close others. Male gender, older age, lower education level and poor social connectedness were associated with greater odds of non-disclosure. Adjusting for socio-demographics and social connectedness, suicidal behavior and mental disorders were overall associated an increased likelihood of sharing suicidal ideation with health professionals. LIMITATIONS: Cross-sectional survey assessing lifetime suicidal ideation and disclosure. CONCLUSIONS: The findings provide important insight into the individual and social factors to take into account in suicidal ideation disclosure.