We propose that humans are adapted to transfer knowledge to, and receive knowledge from, conspecifics by teaching. This adaptation, which we call 'pedagogy', involves the emergence of a special communication system that does not presuppose either language or high-level theory of mind, but could itself provide a basis facilitating the development of these human-specific abilities both in phylogenetic and ontogenetic terms. We speculate that tool manufacturing and mediated tool use made the evolution of such a new social learning mechanism necessary. However, the main body of evidence supporting this hypothesis comes from developmental psychology. We argue that many central phenomena of human infant social cognition that may seem puzzling in the light of their standard functional explanation can be more coherently and plausibly interpreted as reflecting the adaptations to receive knowledge from social partners through teaching.

I propose to build a robot that can engage in simple but meaningful social exchanges with humans. In contrast to current works in robotics that focus on robot-robot interactions (Billard & Dautenhahn 1997), this work explores human-robot interactions whereby a socially sophisticated human assists the robot in acquiring more sophisticated communication skills. In addition, the human helps the robot learn the meaning these acts have for others. Toward this end, my approach is inspired by the way an infant learns how to communicate with his caregiver. An infant's emotions and drives play an important role in generating meaningful interactions with the caregiver (Bullowa 1979). These interactions constitute learning episodes for new communication behaviors. In particular, the infant is strongly biased to learn communication skills that result in having the caregiver satisfy the infant's drives (Halliday 1975). The parent, in turn, is strongly biased to provide sca#olding acts for the infan...

Abstract not found

How to do things without words:

This paper re-examines how primates can learn the rudiments of language. Based on consideration of how robots might simulate their achievements, it is stressed that full immersion in language allows babies and bonobos to use its dynamics in discovering how to orchestrate their bodies in line with adult acts and expectations. As language gets distributed, an infant or bonobo uses something like 'self directed anticipatory learning' to transform itself into a special kind of self-regulating system. Using 'perspective taking' it exploits a social environment that includes both other people and external cognitive props. Close attention to how encultured bonobos exploit 'languaging' show that a lexigram board serves as a computational resource for the production of sounds that, to human ears, fit the circumstances. In humans, related processes use biases that exploit affective strategies based on interpersonal bodily attunement. Drawing on affect and social learning, a bonobo or baby develops increasingly complex ways of contextualizing; it uses past experience to act in ways likely to affect future events. Human infants go through behavioural stages that are self-implicating, self-directing and, finally, self-regulating. It is concluded that those interested in robotics can gain from looking at language as complex joint activity that allows for affect driven shifts in patterns of dual control.