Reframing the Role of Novelty within Social HRI: from Noise to Information

Social robots, understood as the category of embodied robots extending into social domains through reciprocal social interaction, are still a practical novelty in most of these domains today. However, the phenomenon of novelty effects is only eclectically and peripherally addressed within most research into social human-robot interaction, and even when treated more extensively, it is usually framed as a source of noise in need of reduction. In this paper, I will argue a reframing of novelty effects that posits the phenomenon as a valuable source of information. In the first part of the paper, I present a tentative account of what I call experiential novelty in order to illustrate (1) that novelty should be understood as an 'original feature of experience', (2) that novelty arises in the engagement between an experiencer and an experience where the experiencer's possessed knowledge is inadequate in making sense of the experience, and (3) that novelty effects should be seen as cognitive and behavioural expressions of a 'search for meaning'. In the latter part of the paper, I discuss some of the current research lines within social human-robot interaction research from the perspective of this account of novelty. Most notably, I argue that retrospectively, the account holds explanatory utility in analyzing many of the findings in this research-field, and prospectively, the account holds generative utility in pointing to new ways in which participant experiences of novelty may be employed in research.