This international, peer-reviewed journal aims to advance knowledge in the growing and strongly interdisciplinary area of Interaction Studies in biological and artificial systems. Understanding social behaviour and communication in biological and artificial systems requires knowledge of evolutionary, developmental and neurobiological aspects of social behaviour and communication; the embodied nature of interactions; origins and characteristics of social and narrative intelligence; perception, action and communication in the context of dynamic and social environments; social learning, adaptation and imitation; social behaviour in human-machine interactions; the nature of empathic understanding, behaviour and intention reading; minimal requirements and systems exhibiting social behaviour; the role of cultural factors in shaping social behaviour and communication in biological or artificial societies.

The journal welcomes contributions that analyze social behaviour in humans and other animals as well as research into the design and synthesis of robotic, software, virtual and other artificial systems, including applications such as exploiting human-machine interactions for educational or therapeutic purposes. Fields of interest comprise evolutionary biology, artificial intelligence, artificial life, robotics, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, computational neuroscience, cognitive modeling, ethology, social and biological anthropology, palaeontology, animal behaviour, linguistics.

Interaction Studies publishes research articles, research reports, and book reviews.

Interaction Studiesis a successor of Evolution of Communication. While IS significantly broadens the original aims and scope of EoC, we clearly continue to encourage researchers studying the origins of human language and the evolutionary continuum of communication in general to submit high quality manuscripts to Interaction Studies.

Special Issue on Group-robot interaction
Submission Date: 2024-12-15

Following the series of workshops GROUND (advancing GROup UNderstanding and robots'
aDaptive behavior), this special issue aims to attract the latest research on group
dynamics when interacting with artificial agents.

As collaborative and assistive robots are increasingly integrated into our daily lives and
participate in multi-party scenarios, it is crucial to ensure that their behavior considers
the complex dynamics of these contexts. Robots have proven to be effective tools for
studying social and physical interactions within groups, providing valuable insights on how
human group dynamics can be modeled, enhanced, and ultimately predicted. The
exploration of group dynamics in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) presents inherent
challenges from both a technical (e.g., simultaneous tracking of multiple users) and a
theoretical point of view (e.g., modeling multiple agents whose behavior dynamically
influences those of others during decision making tasks).

We aim to collect a cutting-edge perspective on group interactions, with a particular
interest for applications in the HRI domain. Our objective is to gather contributions
focused on comprehending, modeling, and describing human behavior when engaging in
groups with artificial agents, such as virtual avatars or robots. Topics of interest also
include solutions for autonomous agents’ behavior, to promote adaptation to different
groups' needs, contexts, and long-term interactions.

We identified two main research pillars: (1) using social agents for understanding group
dynamics; (2) designing agents able to interact with groups. We also encourage
contributions exploring the ethical implications of group dynamics research, such as
potential negative outcomes and biases towards group members. We look forward to
novel interdisciplinary approaches at the intersection of social psychology, cognitive
science and machine learning with the final objective of developing intelligent and ethical
group-aware robot behaviors.

Topics of interests for the special issue include but are not limited to:
• Designing agents able to interact with groups.
• Learning strategies for autonomous behaviors of agents in groups.
• Adaptation and personalization to groups.
• Understanding group dynamics by using social agents.
• Modelling, understanding and predicting group behaviors.
• Novel experimental designs for conducting group-robot interaction
research.
• Promoting natural communication, mutual understanding and trust in
human-agent mixed groups.
• Gamification in multiparty human-agent interactions.
• Exploring different agent’s roles (e.g., peer, teacher, helper or friend) in group
interactions.
• Ethical considerations in researching group dynamics and potential biases
or negative consequences.

Editors:
Senior editor: Alessandra Sciutti
Guest editors: Giulia Belgiovine, Linda Lastrico, Dario Pasquali
For additional information: workshop.ground[at]gmail.com

Important dates
• Deadline for paper submission: 15 th December 2024
• First notification to the authors: 15 th March 2025
• Deadline for revised papers submission: 15 th April 2025
• Final notification for authors: 15 th June 2025
• Submission of camera-ready manuscripts: 15 th July 2025

Review process
Each submission will be evaluated by at least two reviewers chosen from experts in the
field. The guest editors will evaluate and discuss the reviews to make a final decision
regarding each submission.
For more details on the submission process and guidelines, please refer to
https://benjamins.com/catalog/is/submission. The option “Special Issue: Group-Robot
Interaction” can be selected during the submission process from the drop-down menu.