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.

It has been proposed that actions are intrinsically linked to perception [James, W. (1890). Principles of psychology. New York, NY, USA: Holt; Jeannerod M. (1994). The representing brain – neural correlates of motor intention and imagery. Behavioural Brain Sciences, 17, 187–202; Prinz, W. (1997). Perception and action planning. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 9, 129–154]. The idea behind these theories is that observing, imagining or in any way representing an action excites the motor programs used to execute that same action. There is neurophysiological evidence that neurons in premotor cortex of monkeys respond both during movement execution and during the observation of goal-directed action (‘mirror neurons’). In humans, a proportion of the brain regions involved in executing actions are activated by the mere observation of action (the ‘mirror system’). In this paper, we briefly review recent empirical studies of the mirror system, and discuss studies demonstrating interference effects between observed and executed movements. This interference, which might be a form of ‘motor contagion’, seems to arise specifically from the observation of biological movements, whether or not these movements are goal-directed. We suggest that this crude motor contagion is the first step in a more sophisticated predictive system that allows us to infer goals from the observation of actions.

& Most studies on visual perception of human beings have focused on perception of faces. However, bodies are another important visual element, which help us to identify a member of our species in the visual scene. In order to study whether similar configural information processing is used in body and face perception, we recorded high-density evenrelated potentials (ERPs) to normal and distorted faces and bodies in adults and 3-month-old infants. In adults, the N1 responses evoked by bodies and faces were similar in amplitude but differed slightly in latency. The voltage topography of N1 also differed in concordance with fMRI data showing that two distinct areas are involved in face and body perception. Distortion affected ERPs to faces and bodies similarly from N1 on, although the effect was significant earlier for bodies than for faces. These results suggest that fast processing of configural information is not specific to faces but it also occurs for bodies. In 3-month-old infants, distortion decreased the amplitude of P400 around 450 msec, showing no interaction with

We present a novel real-time computer vision-based system for facilitating interactions between a single human and a multi-robot system: a user first selects an individual robot from a group of robots, by simply looking at it, and then commands the selected robot with a motion-based gesture. Robots estimate which robot the user is looking at by performing a distributed leader election based on the “score” of the detected frontal face. 1

1.1 Approach and outcomes............................... 5

Young infants are sensitive to self-directed social actions, but do they appreciate the intentional, target-directed nature of such behaviors? We addressed this question by investigating infants ’ understanding of social gaze in third-party interactions. Tenmonth-old infants discriminated between two people in mutual versus averted gaze, and expected a person to look at her social partner during conversation. In contrast, 9-monthold infants showed neither ability, even when provided with information that highlighted the gazer’s social goals. These results indicate considerable improvement in infants’ abilities to analyze the social gaze of others towards the end of their first year, which may relate to their appreciation of gaze as both a social and goal-directed action. Running head: INFANTS ’ DEVELOPING UNDERSTANDING OF SOCIAL GAZE 3 Infants ’ Developing Understanding of Social Gaze Eye gaze is a central element of human social interaction that can reflect a person's feelings, her attitudes towards a social partner, and her goals for their interaction (Kleinke, 1986). Within an interaction, social partners attend to each other’s gaze and use gaze to regulate both the immediate sequence of their exchange (Kendon, 1967) and

material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of these funding agencies. ii

Young infants are sensitive to self-directed social actions, but do they appreciate the intentional, target-directed nature of such behaviors? The authors addressed this question by investigating infants ’ understanding of social gaze in third-party interactions (N = 104). Ten-month-old infants discriminated between 2 people in mutual versus averted gaze, and expected a person to look at her social partner during conversation. In contrast, 9-month-old infants showed neither ability, even when provided with information that highlighted the gazer’s social goals. These results indicate considerable improvement in infants ’ abilities to analyze the social gaze of others toward the end of their 1st year, which may relate to their appreciation of gaze as both a social and goal-directed action. We are grateful to the infants and families who participated. This research was funded by NSF GRF DGE-0644491 to J.S.B.

Abstract not found

Imitation by social interaction? Analysis of a minimal