This paper discusses the concept of joint attention and the di#erent skills underlying its development. We argue that joint attention is much more than gaze following or simultaneous looking because it implies a shared intentional relation to the world. The current state-of-the-art in robotic and computational models of the di#erent prerequisites of joint attention is discussed in relation with a developmental timeline drawn from results in child studies.

& A recently emerging view sees language understanding as closely linked to sensory and motor processes. The present study investigates this issue by examining the influence of processing action verbs and concrete nouns on the execution of a reaching movement. Fine-grained analyses of movement kinematics revealed that relative to nouns, processing action verbs significantly affects overt motor performance. Within 200 msec after onset, processing action verbs interferes with a concurrent reaching movement. By contrast, the same words assist reaching movement when processed before movement onset. The cross-talk between language processes and overt motor behavior provides unambiguous evidence that action words and motor action share common cortical representations and could thus suggest that cortical motor regions are indeed involved in action word retrieval. &

Observing actions and understanding sentences about actions activates corresponding motor processes in the observer–comprehender. In 5 experiments, the authors addressed 2 novel questions regarding language-based motor resonance. The 1st question asks whether visual motion that is associated with an action produces motor resonance in sentence comprehension. The 2nd question asks whether motor resonance is modulated during sentence comprehension. The authors ’ experiments provide an affirmative response to both questions. A rotating visual stimulus affects both actual manual rotation and the comprehension of manual rotation sentences. Motor resonance is modulated by the linguistic input and is a rather immediate and localized phenomenon. The results are discussed in the context of theories of action observation and mental simulation.

Background: Theories of embodied knowledge argue that the representation and recruitment of motor processes may be important for deriving the meaning of many linguistic and perceptual elements. Aims: We examined the conditions under which gestural knowledge associated with manipulable objects is evoked. Methods & Procedures: A priming paradigm was used in which an object was presented in advance of a photograph of a hand gesture that participants were to mimic. On related trials, the target gesture was the same as the gesture typically used to interact with the object prime. On unrelated trials, the target gesture was not related to the object. In another set of experiments, a Stroop-like paradigm was used in which participants learned to produce manual responses to colour cues. After training, coloured photographs of manipulable objects were presented. The colour-cued gesture was either one typically used with the object or was unrelated to it. Outcomes & Results: In the priming experiments, response latencies were shorter in the related condition, but only when participants also made an identification response to

This book is about the interface between natural language and the sensorimotor system. It is obvious that there is an interface between language and sensorimotor cognition, because we can talk about what we see and do. The main proposal in the book is that the interface is more direct than is commonly assumed. To argue for this proposal I focus on a simple concrete episode—a man grabbing a cup—which can be reported in a simple transitive sentence (e.g. the English sentence The man grabbed a cup). In the first part of the book I present a detailed model of the sensorimotor processes involved in experiencing this episode, both as the agent bringing it about and as an observer watching it happen. The model draws on a large body of research in neuroscience and psychology. I also present a model of the syntactic structure of the associated transitive sentence, developed within the entirely separate discipline of theoretical linguistics. This latter model is a version of Chomsky’s ‘Minimalist ’ syntactic theory, which assumes that a sentence reporting the episode has the same underlying syntactic structure (called ‘logical form’) regardless of which language it is in. My main proposal is that these two independently motivated models are in fact closely

Traditionally, in robotics, artificial intelligence, and neuroscience, there has been a focus on the study of the control or the neural system itself. Recently there has been an increasing interest into the notion of embodiment in all disciplines dealing with intelligent behavior, including psychology, philosophy, and linguistics. In this paper, we explore the far-reaching and often surprising implications of this concept. While embodiment has often been used in its trivial meaning, i.e. „intelligence requires a body“, there are deeper and more important consequences, concerned with connecting brain, body, and environment, or more generally with the relation between physical and information (neural, control) processes. It turns out that, for example, robots designed by exploiting embodiment are frequently simpler, more robust and adaptive than those based on the classical control paradigm. Often, morphology and materials can take over some of the functions normally attributed to control, a phenomenon called “morphological computation”. It can be shown that through the embodied interaction with the environment, in particular through sensory-motor coordination, information structure is induced in the sensory data, thus facilitating perception and learning. A number of case studies are presented to illustrate the concept of embodiment. We conclude with some speculations about potential lessons for robotics.

Abstract not found

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jml

Inspired by the pioneering work of J. J. Gibson, we provide a workable characterisation of the notion of affordance and we explore a possible architecture for an agent that is able to autonomously acquire affordance concepts. 1 1

Cover picture “Mehuhäätä vanhainkodissa”, “Lolly pop in the old folks home”, by Riitta Nelimarkka, 1991. We thank the artist and are grateful for the opportunity to use her spirited art in our cover again. Editing assistance was provided by Mr. Ilkka Leppänen and Mr. Mikko Martela.