Masako Myowa‐Yamakoshi
Papers
1
Total Citations
42
H-Index
1
About
Masako Myowa-Yamakoshi is a leading developmental psychologist whose research bridges social cognition, robotics, and infant behavior. Her work explores how infants perceive and respond to faces, particularly the mechanisms underlying social novelty and familiarity. In her highly cited 2012 study, she demonstrated that infants show a preference for strangers’ or mothers’ faces over morphed faces, revealing an early-emerging “uncanny valley” response—a negative reaction to near-human but artificial stimuli. This finding, with 42 citations, has profound implications for understanding social development and human-robot interaction. Myowa-Yamakoshi’s contributions extend to comparative cognition, where she examines the evolutionary roots of social learning in humans and non-human primates. Her interdisciplinary approach has shaped fields from developmental psychology to artificial intelligence, earning her recognition as a pioneer in studying how infants navigate the boundary between the familiar and the novel. Her work continues to influence researchers exploring the origins of social bonding and the design of socially engaging robots.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1