The social body in motion: cognitive development in infants and androids

Abstract

During the past two decades, embodiment has become an important concept in many areas of cognitive science, but so far there is no common understanding of what constitutes embodied cognition and what kind of body an artificial humanlike cognizer would require. Work in embodied artificial intelligence and robotics has addressed, to some degree, what kind of bodily implementation is necessary for embodied cognition, but crucial factors such as the role of social interaction and the 'body-in-motion' have still not received much attention. We argue that, in the human child, the interplay of social scaffolding and self-induced locomotion is fundamental to the development of joint attention and a 'self'. Furthermore, we discuss the implications of the social dynamics of bodily experience for android science. We argue that keeping scientific and engineering perspectives apart, but also understanding their relation, is important for clarifying the objectives of android science.