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About

Olivier Masson is a pioneering researcher at the intersection of educational robotics, experimental psychology, and human-robot interaction. His work fundamentally explores how humanoid robots—particularly the NAO robot—can serve as powerful experimental tools to study and enhance human cognition and learning. Masson’s major contributions include demonstrating that robots can effectively replace human experimenters to investigate classic psychological biases, such as the “endowment effect,” where individuals irrationally value owned objects more than equivalent unowned ones. His highly cited 2018 paper, “Learning by Teaching with Humanoid Robot” (59 citations), provides a seminal review of how robots can improve children’s learning abilities through peer-tutoring paradigms. Masson has also advanced the methodological use of robots in experimental psychology, showing how they can transmit social cues to study reasoning and decision-making biases from a novel social robotics perspective. His work on pragmatic processing in artificial agents highlights critical limitations in current conversational AI. With a growing citation impact across psychology, education, and robotics, Masson’s research offers transformative insights into designing robots that not only teach but also reveal fundamental aspects of human social cognition.