How Does Embodiment Affect the Human Perception of Computational Creativity? An Experimental Study Framework

TL;DR

This paper introduces an experimental framework to study how the physical embodiment of computational systems influences human perception of their creativity, separating perception from actual creative output.

Contribution

It proposes a novel framework that isolates embodiment effects on creativity perception, including manipulation of embodiment and perceptual evidence in human assessments.

Findings

Framework enables controlled studies of embodiment effects

Separates perception from actual creativity

Provides guidelines for measuring creativity assessment

Abstract

Which factors influence the human assessment of creativity exhibited by a computational system is a core question of computational creativity (CC) research. Recently, the system's embodiment has been put forward as such a factor, but empirical studies of its effect are lacking. To this end, we propose an experimental framework which isolates the effect of embodiment on the perception of creativity from its effect on creativity per se. We not only manipulate the system's embodiment, but also the perceptual evidence as the basis for the human creativity assessment. We motivate the core framework with embodiment and perceptual evidence as independent and the creative process as controlled variable, and we provide recommendations on measuring the assessment of creativity as dependent variable. We hope the framework will inspire others to study the human perception of embodied CC in a principled manner.