We have developed a cognitive architecture for robotic teammates based on the neuro-psychological principles of perceptual symbols and simulation, with the aim of attaining increased fluency in human-robot teams. An instantiation of this architecture was implemented on a robotic desk lamp, performing in a human-robot collaborative task. This paper describes initial results from a human-subject study measuring team efficiency and team fluency, in which the robot works on a joint task with untrained subjects. We find significant differences in a number of efficiency and fluency metrics, when comparing our architecture to a purely reactive robot with similar capabilities.

hen a most fortuitous event occurred (especially for this story). As I was leaving the party, I ran into Doug in Sandy's front yard and asked if he could bring me a belt the next morning. Being the extremely generous guy that he is, Doug took off his belt on the spot and handed it to me. I'm sure that Sandy's neighbors are still talking about this. More importantly, though, when I put on the belt, it was about three inches too short, which I found surprising, given that I'm in pretty good physical condition. The thought that ran immediately through my mind was, "Wow, Doug is in great shape." As anyone who has spent a few days with Doug knows, he exercises religiously and eats carefully, with the result being his gazelle-like figure. This is one of Doug's embodied qualities that might be missed from a purely cognitive perspective. Another of Doug's most notable embodied qualities is how intensely he blushes. When I pointed this out at the workshop, true to form, Doug produced one of his

Increasing evidence suggests that mundane knowledge about objects, people, and events is grounded in the brain’s modality-specific systems. The modality-specific representations that become active to represent these entities in actual experience are later used to simulate them in their absence. In particular, simulations of perception, action, and mental states often appear to underlie the representation of knowledge, making it embodied and situated. Findings that support this conclusion are briefly reviewed from cognitive psychology, social psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. A similar representational process may underlie religious knowledge. In support of this conjecture, embodied knowledge appears central to three aspects of religious experience: religious visions, religious beliefs, and religious rituals. In religious visions, the process of simulation offers a natural account of how these experiences are produced. In religious beliefs, knowledge about the body and the environment are typically central in religious frameworks, and are likely to affect the perception of daily experience. In religious rituals, embodiments appear central to conveying religious ideas metaphorically and to establishing them in memory. To the extent that religious knowledge is like non-religious knowledge, embodiment is likely to play central roles. When most lay people hear the term, “knowledge, ” they think of material acquired explicitly in formal education, such as knowledge of history or algebra. They also think of products that result from academic inquiry, * Emory University.

With the aim of fluency and efficiency in human-robot teams, we have developed a cognitive architecture based on the neuro-psychological principles of anticipation and perceptual simulation through top-down biasing. An instantiation of this architecture was implemented on a non-anthropomorphic robotic lamp, performing in a human-robot collaborative task. In a human-subject study, in which the robot works on a joint task with untrained subjects, we find our approach to be significantly more efficient and fluent than in a comparable system without anticipatory perceptual simulation. We also show the robot and the human to be increasingly contributing at a similar rate. Through self-report, we find significant differences between the two conditions in the sense of team fluency, the team’s improvement over time, and the robot’s contribution to the efficiency and fluency. We also find difference in verbal attitudes towards the robot: most notably, subjects working with the anticipatory robot attribute more positive and more human qualities to the robot, but display increased self-blame and self-deprecation.

■ Research on the spatio-temporal dynamics of visual object recognition suggests a recurrent, interactive model whereby an initial feedforward sweep through the ventral stream to prefrontal cortex is followed by recurrent interactions. However, critical questions remain regarding the factors that mediate the degree of recurrent interactions necessary for meaningful object recognition. The novel prediction we test here is that recurrent interactivity is driven by increasing semantic integration demands as defined by the complexity of semantic information required by the task and driven by the stimuli. To test this prediction, we recorded magnetoencephalography data while participants named living and nonliving objects during two naming tasks. We found that the spatio-temporal dynamics of neural activity were modulated by the level of semantic integration required. Specifically, source reconstructed time courses and phase synchronization measures showed increased recurrent interactions as a function of semantic integration demands. These findings demonstrate that the cortical dynamics of object processing are modulated by the complexity of semantic information required from the visual input. ■

Thirty years ago, grounded cognition had roots in philosophy, perception, cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, and cognitive neuropsychology. During the next 20 years, grounded cognition continued developing in these areas, and it also took new forms in robotics, cognitive ecology, cognitive neuroscience, and developmental psychology. In the past 10 years, research on grounded cognition has grown rapidly, especially in cognitive neuroscience, social neuroscience, cognitive psychology, social psychology, and developmental psychology. Currently, grounded cognition appears to be achieving increased acceptance throughout cognitive science, shifting from relatively minor status to increasing importance. Nevertheless, researchers wonder whether grounded mechanisms lie at the heart of the cognitive system or are peripheral to classic symbolic mechanisms. Although grounded cognition is currently dominated by demonstration experiments in the absence of well-developed theories, the area is likely to become increasingly theory driven over the next 30 years. Another likely development is the increased incorporation of grounding mechanisms into cognitive architectures and into accounts of classic cognitive phenomena. As this incorporation occurs, much functionality of these architectures and

Abstract — We have developed a cognitive architecture for a robotic teammate based on the neuro-psychological principles of perceptual symbols and simulation, with the aim of attaining increased fluency in human-robot teams. An instantiation of this architecture was implemented on a robotic desk lamp, performing in a human-robot collaborative task. This paper describes initial results from a human-subject study measuring team efficiency and team fluency, when the robot works on a joint task with naïve subjects. We find a significant difference in a number of efficiency and fluency metrics, when comparing our architecture to a purely reactive robot with similar capabilities. We also report significant differences in a number of self-report metrics, as well as differences in verbal attitudes towards the robot. I.

The major semantic properties of action verbs and argument structure constructions are summarized using the theoretical framework of Construction Grammar. This sets the stage for an analysis of the neuroanatomical substrates of action verbs and argument structure constructions in support of the hypothesis that the linguistic representation of action is grounded in the mirror neuron system. The discussion is then broadened to consider the emergence of language during ontogeny and phylogeny.

In this chapter we will discuss the concepts of “presence” (Inner Presence) and “social presence” (Co-presence) within a cognitive and ecological perspective. Specifically, we claim that the concepts of “presence” and “social presence” are the possible links between self, action, communication and culture. In the first section we will provide a capsule view of Heidegger’s work by examining the two main features of the Heideggerian concept of “being”: spatiality and “being with”. We argue that different visions from social and cognitive sciences – Situated Cognition, Embodied Cognition, Enactive Approach, Situated Simulation, Covert Imitation- and discoveries from neuroscience – Mirror and Canonical Neurons- have many contact points with this view. In particular, these data suggest that our conceptual system dynamically produces contextualized representations (simulations) that support grounded action in different situations. This is allowed by a common coding – the motor code – shared by perception, action and concepts. This common coding also allows the subject for natively recognizing actions done by other selves within the

In a recent neuroimaging study of macaque monkeys, Gil-da-Costa and colleagues reported that a distributed circuit of modality-specific properties represents macaques’ conceptual knowledge of social situations. The circuit identified shows striking similarities to analogous circuits in humans that represent conceptual knowledge. This parallel suggests that a common architecture underlies the conceptual systems of different species, although with additional systems extending human conceptual abilities significantly. The human conceptual system contains knowledge that supports the spectrum of cognitive activities from perception to thought. Standard accounts, such as semantic memory, view the conceptual system as modular and amodal. From this perspective, the conceptual system is