Strange Carers: Robots as Attachment Figures and Aids to Parenting

The present comment focuses on the distinction between attachment as bond formation and expectations of availability and responsiveness (security) within attachment relationships. We enumerate key components of bonding and functions of carer secure base support. Our analysis has implications for design and suggests that robots are unlikely to serve effectively as sole carers. Even with robots as part-time carers, attachment-like bonds would likely focus on human carers. Similarly, although infants and children would certainly build expectations regarding the availability and responsiveness of robot carers, the quality of human care would probably be the determining influence on later development and competence. Notwithstanding their limitations of robots as attachment figures they have considerable potential to extend parental care and enrich infant exploration. The Sharkey’s paper and further consideration of robots as carers for infants, children, older adults, and To appear in: Interaction Studies: Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systems, 2010, Vol. 11, xxx-xxx. Petters, Waters, Schonbrot Strange carers 2 ploration, attachment figures play an important role in developing knowledge, experience, and competencies that are important to later development and adaptation. As a haven of safety, they play an important role in physical security and affect regulation. And finally, attachment is associated with a distinctive response to loss that marks such relationships as uniquely significant and deeply integrated into a person's understanding of their world and their self. This perspective reflects a great deal of ethological observation, empirical research, and theoretical analysis and has proven useful in translating theory into practice. Moreover, definitions play an important implication for the kinds of competencies we would look for in a robot carer. Security in Attachment Relationships Informally, the term secure attachment suggests a bond that is tight or strong. This was the sense in psychoanalytic and classical learning theories. With the decline of drive theories, the notion that attachments differ primarily in strength has fallen into disuse. Instead, individual differences are conceptualized in terms of the cognitive and behavioral facets of secure base use and support. To be secure in an attachment relationship means (a) to be confident in an attachment figure's availability, responsiveness, and competence the expectation of that person being "always there for me", and (b) as a result to explore confidently from the attachment figure as a secure base and to find ready comfort in proximity and contact as needed. The difference between attachment as intensity versus quality is nicely captured in the German translation of security as sicherheit (certainty or confidence). Primarily implicit, pattern based, and automatic, the cognitive and behavioral components of attachment have strong emotional associations and induce strong emotional responses when confirmed, violated, impeded, or interrupted. Concepts like presence versus absence and degree of consolidation have proven difficult to operationalize. Instead, since the 1970's researchers have used naturalistic observations, the Ainsworth Strange Situation laboratory procedure, and the Berkeley Adult Attachment Interview to assess the cognitive and behavioral components of security in attachment relationships in developmental, clinical, and cross-cultural studies. Much of this work is reviewed in the recent Handbook of Attachment (Cassidy & Shaver, 2008). Observational research has demonstrated that the expectations of an attachment figure's availability and responsiveness we call attachment security or insecurity (a) arise from actual experience, (b) tend to be stable into childhood and early adulthood, (c) are open to revision in light of further experience, (d) can differ from one relationship to another, and (e) can provide a prototype around which are constructed initial expectations in adult relationships and initial goals in parenting (e.g., Sroufe, Egeland, Carlson, & Collins, 2005; Grossmann, Grossmann, & Waters, 2005). Risks Attending Attachment to Robot Carers The distinction between attachment (bondedness) and security-insecurity (expectations about the availability and responsiveness of an attachment figure) points to different mechanisms and different risks. Imprinting. Aside from work on species identification and imprinting in non-human species, we know very little about the role early experience plays in activating the capacity to form lasting bonds or any impact early experience might have on later social responsiveness. However, Rutter (e.g. 1999) has concluded from a detailed review of clinical research that lack of opportunity to form attachment (usually due to early chronic illness, institutional care, or multiple foster placements) is a significant factor in later psychopathology. The question then is whether bonding to a robot is better than not bonding at all, and whether it provides sufficient foundations for later social learning. As the Sharkey's point out, endowing a robot with even minimal caregiving competence will be a challenge. Asimov's prescription that a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm implies considerable expertise in what is necessary and tolerable moment to moment, and over significant periods of development. Few, if any, adults begin their parenting careers with such expertise. Moreover, even sole carers operate in a social context. They depend instead on a great deal of trial and error, feedback from the child, problem solving, error correction and compensatory behavior, and observational learning. Much of our success as parents thus depends on living in communities of helpful more experienced carers and on the fact that skills not successfully prepared or instilled by primary carers can be "backed up" by learning in the peer group and in other social contexts. Even human carers would likely fail if they undertook child rearing in such an impoverished enPetters, Waters, Schonbrot Strange carers 3 vironment. The plausibility then of robots as sole carers depends not only on endowing them with caregiving skills but on their potential for social learning. The challenges to robots as sole carers increase dramatically as the child grows older. As the child's cognitive skills increase, the attachment figure's contributions become increasingly abstract and difficult to implement in software. Even attachment researchers often assume that the function of attachment figures is primarily to insure safety and support social-emotional development. But a major function of attachment is to support the growth of competence and independence (Waters, 2002). Secure base figures are not simply someone to run to in an emergency. They play an important role in making the child feel comfortable to explore new environments, practice and consolidate skills, gain practical knowledge about the self and the physical and social world, and build conceptual tools that support adaptive independent behavior. To mention just a few components of good secure base support, the secure base figure enriches exploration by: