How Does Embodiment Affect the Human Perception of Computational Creativity? An Experimental Study Framework

Which factors influence the human assessment of creativity exhibited by a computational system is a core question of computational creativity (CC) research. Recently, the system’s embodiment has been put forward as such a factor, but empirical studies of its effect are lacking. To this end, we propose an experimental framework which isolates the effect of embodiment on the perception of creativity from its effect on creativity per se. We manipulate not only the system’s embodiment but also the human perception of creativity, which we factorise into the assessment of creativity, and the perceptual evidence that feeds into that assessment. We motivate the core framework with embodiment and perceptual evidence as independent and the creative process as a controlled variable, and we provide recommendations on measuring the assessment of creativity as a dependent variable. We propose three types of perceptual evidence with respect to the creative system, the creative process and the creative artefact, borrowing from the popular four perspectives on creativity. We hope the framework will inspire and guide others to study the human perception of embodied CC in a principled manner.