Marianna Burca
Papers
1
Total Citations
37
H-Index
1
About
Marianna Burca is a pioneering researcher at the intersection of clinical psychology and human-robot interaction, with a primary focus on how individuals with severe mental illness—particularly schizophrenia—perceive and respond to emotional expressions in humanoid robots. Her most-cited work, a 2016 exploratory study (37 citations), broke new ground by investigating whether patients with schizophrenia recognize emotional valence in robot faces differently than in human faces, a critical question for designing socially assistive robots. This research directly addresses the therapeutic potential of humanoid robots in psychiatric care, an area previously explored mainly in autism but largely neglected in schizophrenia. Burca’s contributions have helped establish a foundational understanding of how robotic emotional expressivity can be calibrated for clinical populations, with implications for developing non-pharmacological interventions. Her work bridges cognitive neuroscience, affective computing, and psychiatry, demonstrating how robotic platforms can serve as controlled, reproducible stimuli for studying social cognition deficits. By showing that patients’ recognition patterns differ between human and robot faces, Burca has opened new avenues for using robots in diagnostic and therapeutic settings, making her a key figure in the emerging field of socially assistive robotics for mental health.
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Top Papers
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