After the COVID-19 pandemic, the adoption of distance learning has been accelerated in educational institutions in multiple countries. In addition to using a videoconferencing system with camera images, avatars can also be used for remote classes. In particular, an android avatar with a sense of presence has the potential to provide higher quality education than a video-recorded lecture. To investigate the specific educational effects of android avatars, we used a Geminoid. an android with the appearance of a specific individual, and conducted both laboratory experiment and large-scale field experiment. The first compared the android avatar lecture with a videoconferencing system. We found that the use of an android avatar for the lecture led to the significantly higher subjective feelings of being seen, feeling more motivated, and focused on the lecture compared to the video lecture. We further conducted a large-scale field experiment with an android avatar to clarify what contributes to such educational effects. The results suggest that the students’ perception of android’s anthroppomorphism and competence has a positive impact, and discomfort has a negative impact on the subjective experence of educational effect. These results indicate the role of embodied anthropomorphization in positive educational experience. The important point of this study is that both the laboratory experiment and the large-scale experiment were conducted to clarify the educational effects of androids. These results support several related studies and are clarified in detail. Based on these results, the potential for the future usage of androids in education is discussed.

Android avatar robots have a potential to be applied to various real-world scenarios. We have conducted lectures using our android in diverse settings such as conferences. Several previous studies indicated that gestures can play an important role in human-robot interaction (HRI). The current study focused on the fundamental question of whether gestures are necessary for android robot and explored the relationship between gestures and negative attitudes toward robots. Experimental results showed that android robot with gestures enhances their anthropomorphism and animacy. The results also showed that without gestures, people with high negative attitude toward situations of interaction with robots evaluate the android robot lower. With gestures, people with high negative attitude toward emotions in interaction with robots evaluate the android robot higher. This might suggest that people with high negative attitudes toward robots pay more attention to the android with gestures and thus appreciate it more in lectures.

This study employs Conversation Analysis to create a recursive model that improves the quality of human-robot interaction. Our research goal is to create a dialogue robot that offers pleasant experiences for users, so they are willing to engage in repeated interactions in daily lives. While there has been dramatic progress in the performance of dialogue robots, there has been less attention to the importance of users' interactional experience compared to the "specs" of the dialogue system. Employing Goffmanian insights and using research in Conversation Analysis (CA), the present study develops a dialogue closing system to exit the interaction. We then experimentally verified that the robot with the dialogue closing system performs better in the user's perception of the robot (i.e. likeability, politeness, and dialogue satisfaction) than the control group. Further, by analyzing the dialogue between the human and the robot through CA, we propose to build a recursive, reflective model to improve the dialogue model design. A constructive approach urges us to reproduce complicated social phenomena in human-robot interaction so that we can investigate the underlying cognitive mechanisms of humans and create robots that can convey human-like cognition functions and coexist with humans. Taking such a constructive approach, we posit that our recursive model for dialogue systems that uses CA insights and then qualitatively analyzes conversational data can enhance the quality of dialogue systems because the model elucidates which properties of a conversation humans need to experience a conversational robot as human-like. Our study suggests that interactional morality - particularly conversational closings - is one property of human interactions that humans likely require social robots to adhere to.

The article delineates how actors invoke nationalizing accounts-accounts that turn local conditions, actions, and actors into national ones-in everyday talk. Taking the case of Japanese university scientists depicting their commercialization trajectories after the adoption of a set of policies that originated from the U.S., the article delineates how scientists stipulate what they do is Japanese. I outline the discursive practices through which they posit that the cause of others' actions, or of they themselves, derives from some kind of ethno-national distinctiveness. Interviews show how such nationalizing accounts were made through the inevitable gaps between local practices and formal global structures. Scientific and commercialization practices in Japan that deviated from the original form were explained not only through the institutional differences between the U.S. and Japan, but also through lay categories of "culture," ethno-psychology, and readily available tropes about Japanese history. In such nationalizing accounts, what the Japanese scientists did under these new, and explicitly global policies, was argued to be fundamentally Japanese because they were rooted in and caused by the ethno-national character. As new institutional theory suggests, a decoupling between formal rules and local contingencies is a hallmark of any institution. The article further shows that such decoupling could then be used as a resource for everyday nationalism. At least in some cases, the global adoption and the localization of a global form may create an opportunity to enact the nation, contributing to a discourse that posits that an imagined community is distinct and special, precisely as the world becomes more globalized.

Symbolic InteractionEarly View BOOK REVIEW Organizing Scientific Discovery: Everyday Life and Knowledge Production in Planetary Science Nahoko Kameo, Nahoko Kameo nahoko.kameo@nyu.edu New York University, New York, USASearch for more papers by this author Nahoko Kameo, Nahoko Kameo nahoko.kameo@nyu.edu New York University, New York, USASearch for more papers by this author First published: 23 June 2021 https://doi.org/10.1002/symb.562Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Early ViewOnline Version of Record before inclusion in an issue RelatedInformation

This paper explores the trajectories of the development and institutionalization of technology transfer structures and activities in Israel and Japan, two countries with strong science and technology sectors, from the 1950s to the present. We examine the local arrangements that existed before the introduction of the U.S. model in the 1980s and 90s, and how the Japanese and Israeli schemes of technology transfer evolved under the combination of local practices and U.S. influence. Drawing on new institutional theory’s concept of loose coupling, we identify different types of loose coupling between formal structures and practices in Israeli and Japanese fields of technology transfer before and after the introduction of U.S. model. Our analysis show that the new configurations in the two countries are best analyzed by looking at two factors: (1) The perceived efficacy of the local, previous technology transfer arrangements, and; (2) the gap between the local arrangement and the U.S. technology transfer model. In the Israeli case, the former technology transfer model was similar to the one in the U.S.—however, it was perceived as potentially ineffective and thus disputable. In the Japanese case, the former technology transfer model was seen as effective and largely uncontested. The introduction of the U.S. formal model with the university ownership of patents disrupted the informal technology transfer mechanisms in Japan. These historical trajectories explain why, on one hand, Israeli science community was quick to adopt to the U.S. model but contested its efficacy and legitimacy, and on the other hand, the Japanese science community modified the U.S. model through negotiating conditions that were as favorable to firms than universities as their previous mode of technology transfer. Through these cases, we show how loose coupling in each field developed and changed in response to global and local policies. We argue that attention to the local dynamics of loose coupling can help explain local variations in the global diffusion of the American style of technology transfer.

Drawing on an ethnography of software engineering teams that introduced a new and empowerment-centered productivity scheme, this study delineates how, despite management’s affirmation of its commitment, software engineers produced and reproduced a ‘culture of uncertainty’ characterized by constant doubt about how long the scheme would last. Engineers shared previous experiences of failed productivity schemes and collectively used this organizational memory to understand their new situation. Workers drew on this organizational memory in everyday interaction to sustain a culture in which everyday management decisions served as indicators of management’s potential abandonment of the scheme; as a result, workers remained uncommitted to the scheme. Workers interactionally employed organizational memory as a resource that they used to interpret and respond to changes. Analysis of this process shows the links between organizational memory, culture creation, and culture’s influence on productivity scheme changes.

This article delineates how local actors accomplish the adaptation of a global structure and how the social relations in which actors are embedded affect their negotiation of new practices. Specifically, the article draws on interviews and archival research to examine legal and institutional change regarding academic entrepreneurship in Japanese bioscience. In the late 1990s, Japan began to imitate the United States’ method of promoting academic entrepreneurship. New legislation regulating university-industry ties constrained and even prohibited university scientists’ previous practices of informal collaboration with firms. This article shows how Japanese scientists reappropriated the new rules to continue working with firms in ways that would keep established relationships and work arrangements intact. Previously, Japanese scientists maintained informal, trust-based relationships with firms: scientists received “donations” from firms and, in return, provided the “favor” of intellectual property rights. After the introduction of formal rules, scientists tried to avoid breaching their gift-exchange-like relationships with collaborating firms by neglecting, partially following, or working around the new rules to keep giving favors to firms. By tracing the ways Japanese bio-scientists worked around the new system, I thus show how the social ties and practices that local actors are embedded in affect how they think about their work and their relationships: how previous practices and relationships “pull” loosely-coupled practices.

Using the case of calls-for-help to police and fire communications centers and their incident record forms, we present a detailed investigation of how documents play a constitutive role in formal organizations. We take an ethnomethodologically informed approach to the problem, delineating how standard forms in bureaucracies enable organizational participants to coordinate actions across time and space and, at the same time, produce people who perpetually produce such documents or work from them. We focus in this regard on person description. The call-taker needs to translate the call into preset categories, and thus enlist the citizen in the work of inscribing the incident in the way the form requires, (re)producing certain categorizations of personhood, especially race and sex. In this way, organizational documents and their inscriptions function as a kind of technology of reification for these categories.

The dissertation examines how Japanese university scientists in the biosciences responded to legal and institutional changes in academic entrepreneurship. Beginning in the 1990s, the Japanese government initiated a series of policy initiatives that attempted to imitate the U.S. academic environment's approach to promoting entrepreneurship. Using archival resources, interviews with prominent scientists, and quantitative methods, the study shows how Japanese university bioscientists responded to these policy and institutional changes. The changes created a new environment. University patenting was encouraged, and collaborations with firms were presumed to have clear, formal contracts through university administration. Japanese university bioscientists, however, did not simply follow the new rules for academic entrepreneurship. Instead, they created a set of practices that were only loosely coupled with the new rules. The study identifies two sets of conditions for the emergence and development of such practices: the scientists' previous practices, which fostered gift-exchange-like trust relationships with collaborating firms, and the scientists' transnational experience, which made them aware of the different possibilities and methods for commercializing their inventions around the globe. The dissertation draws several conclusions. As I show quantitatively, the policy and institutional changes in Japanese academic entrepreneurship increased the number of university-firm interactions. However, as the interview-materials show, Japanese university scientists also maintained entrepreneurial practices that were not the intended consequences of the policy interventions, including collaborating informally and creating startups in the United States. The resulting structure of academic entrepreneurship in Japan, therefore, was a juxtaposition of its own old practices, new procedures, and opportunities abroad. In some respects, this new structure resembled the old structure more than the American one that policy makers had sought to imitate. By identifying ways that local actors can shape how policy is enacted at the local level, the dissertation complicates the current picture of the global diffusion of academic entrepreneurship.