The representation of agents: anthropomorphism, agency, and intelligence

Agents have become a predominant area of research and development in human interfaces. A major issue in the development of these agents is how to represent them and their activities to the user. Anthropomorphic forms have been suggested, since they provide a great degreeof subtlety and afford social interaction. However, these forms may be problematic since they maybe inherently interpretted as having a high degreeof agency and intelligence. An experiment is presented which supports these contentions.