  One challenge with introducing robots into novel environments is misalignment
between supervisor expectations and reality, which can greatly affect a user's
trust and continued use of the robot. We performed an experiment to test
whether the presence of an explanation of expected robot behavior affected a
supervisor's trust in an autonomous robot. We measured trust both subjectively
through surveys and objectively through a dual-task experiment design to
capture supervisors' neglect tolerance (i.e., their willingness to perform
their own task while the robot is acting autonomously). Our objective results
show that explanations can help counteract the novelty effect of seeing a new
robot perform in an unknown environment. Participants who received an
explanation of the robot's behavior were more likely to focus on their own task
at the risk of neglecting their robot supervision task during the first trials
of the robot's behavior compared to those who did not receive an explanation.
However, this effect diminished after seeing multiple trials, and participants
who received explanations were equally trusting of the robot's behavior as
those who did not receive explanations. Interestingly, participants were not
able to identify their own changes in trust through their survey responses,
demonstrating that the dual-task design measured subtler changes in a
supervisor's trust.
