An experimental investigation of how the appearance of agents affects interpretations people make of the agents' attitudes is described. We conducted a psychological experiment where participants were presented artificial sounds that can make people estimate specific agents' primitive attitudes from three kinds of agents, e.g., Mindstorms robot, AIBO robot, and a normal laptop PC. Specifically, the participants were asked to select the appropriate attitude based on the sounds expressed by these

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... three agents. The results showed that the participants had higher correct interpretation rates when a PC presented the sounds, while they had lower rates when Mindstorms and AIBO robots presented the sounds, even though these agents expressed information that was completely the same.