Primary vowel imitation between agents with different articulation parameters by parrot-like teaching

Abstract

Without any explicit knowledge, human infants acquire the phonemes of adults who have different articulation parameters. By building a robot that reproduces this developmental process, we expect to model as yet unknown cognitive developmental processes and to discover fundamental design principles for machines capable of vocal communication. This paper proposes a model for acquiring Japanese vowels based on observations of imitation between a mother and an infant. We tested the validity of the proposed model by examining whether a real robot can acquire vowels through interactions with a caregiver.