Papers
167
Total Citations
4,161
H-Index
33
About
Agnieszka Wykowska is a leading cognitive neuroscientist and human-robot interaction researcher whose work sits at the fascinating intersection of social cognition, neuroscience, and robotics. Based primarily at the Italian Institute of Technology, she has pioneered the application of neuroscientific methods to understanding how humans perceive and interact with artificial agents. Her most celebrated contribution is the study of the "intentional stance" — the cognitive tendency to attribute mental states to others — and how this mechanism extends to humanoid robots. Her highly cited 2017 paper (297 citations) demonstrated how neuroscientific tools can make robots appear more socially intuitive, while a series of influential studies from 2019 collectively deepened our understanding of whether and when humans genuinely adopt the intentional stance toward machines. Wykowska has also illuminated how beliefs about others' minds shape fundamental attentional processes, including gaze-following and joint attention. With over ten papers exceeding 80 citations, her research has profoundly shaped both the field of human-robot interaction and our broader understanding of social cognition, offering robots not merely as technological tools but as invaluable scientific instruments for probing the human mind.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1
- 2
- 3Do We Adopt the Intentional Stance Toward Humanoid Robots?215 citations · 2019
- 4Embodied artificial agents for understanding human social cognition190 citations · 2016
- 5Beliefs about the Minds of Others Influence How We Process Sensory Information189 citations · 2014
- 6
- 7Adopting the intentional stance toward natural and artificial agents112 citations · 2019
- 8
- 9It’s in the Eyes: The Engaging Role of Eye Contact in HRI85 citations · 2019
- 10Social Robots to Test Flexibility of Human Social Cognition80 citations · 2020