Agnieszka Wykowska

Short CV

Professor Agnieszka Wykowska is the head of the unit “Social Cognition in Human-Robot Interaction” at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), in Genoa, Italy and adjunct professor of Engineering Psychology at the Lulea University of Technology (Sweden). She is also the Coordinator of the Center for Human Technologies, at the IIT. Her background is Cognitive Neuroscience (2006), Ludwig Maximilian University Munich (LMU) and philosophy (2001), Jagiellonian University in Krakow. She obtained a PhD in psychology (2008) from the LMU. In 2016 she was awarded the ERC Starting grant “InStance: Intentional Stance for Social Attunement”. She is Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Social Robotics. Since July 2022 she serves in the role of President of the European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (ESCAN). She is also board member of Association of ERC Grantees and a delegate to the European Research Area (ERA) Forum – an EU expert group shaping EU science policies. Her research foci are interdisciplinary, bridging psychology, cognitive neuroscience, robotics and healthcare. She combines cognitive neuroscience methods with human-robot interaction to understand the human brain mechanisms in interaction with other humans and with technology.

Selected Awards

• 2016, ERC Starting Grant title Intentional Stance for Social Attunement (InStance)

Research Interests

Social Cognition, Human-Robot Interaction, Neuroengineering, EEG

Selected Publications

• Abubshait, A., Kompatsiari, K., Cardellichio, P., Vescovo, E., De Tommaso, D., Fadiga, L., D’Ausilio, A., Wykowska, A. Modulatory effects of communicative gaze on attentional orienting are driven by dmPFC but not rTPJ. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 35 (10): 1670–1680 (2023)

• Lombardi, M. Roselli, C., Kompatsiari, K., Rospo, F., Natale, L., & Wykowska, A. The impact of facial expression and communicative gaze of a humanoid robot on individual Sense of Agency. Nature. Scientific Reports, 13:10113 (2023)

• Ghiglino, D., Floris, F., De Tommaso, D., Kompatsiari, K., Chevalier, P., Priolo, T, Wykowska, A. Artificial scaffolding: Augmenting social cognition by means of robot technology. Autism Research, 16:997-1008 (2023)

• Ciardo, F., De Tommaso, D., Wykowska, A. Human-like behavioural variability blurs the distinction between a human and a machine in a nonverbal Turing test. Science Robotics, 7, eabo 1241 (2022)

• Ciardo, F., De Tommaso, D., Wykowska, A. Joint action with artificial agents: human-likeness in behaviour and morphology affects sensorimotor signaling and social inclusion. Computers in Human Behavior, 132: 107237 (2022)

• Abubshait, A., Parenti, L., Perez-Osorio, J., Wykowska, A. Misleading robot signals in a classification task induce cognitive load as measured by theta synchronization between frontal and temporo-parietal brain regions. Frontiers in Neuroergonomics, 3:838136 (2022)

• Pérez-Osorio, J., Abubshait, A., & Wykowska, A. Irrelevant Robot Signals in a Categorization Task Induce Cognitive Conflict in Performance, Eye-trajectories, the N2 ERP-EEG component, and Frontal Theta Oscillations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 34(1):108-126 (2021)

• Belkaid, M., Kompatsiari, K., De Tommaso, D., Zablith, I., & Wykowska, A. Mutual gaze with a robot affects human neural activity and delays decision-making processes. Science Robotics, 6, eabc5044 (2021)

• Bossi, F., Willemse, C., Cavazza, J., Marchesi, S., Murino, V., Wykowska, A. The human brain reveals resting state activity patterns that are predictive of biases in attitudes towards robots. Science Robotics, 5:46, eabb6652 (2020)

• Natale, L., Bartolozzi, C., Pucci, D., Wykowska, A., Metta, G. The not-yet-finished story of building a robot child. Science Robotics, 2, eaaq1026 (2017)