Katharina J. Rohlfing
Papers
2
Total Citations
17
H-Index
2
About
Katharina J. Rohlfing is a cognitive scientist and linguist whose research sits at the rich intersection of language acquisition, human-robot interaction, and multimodal communication. Her work explores how humans — particularly children — develop conceptual understanding through the coordinated interplay of language, gesture, gaze, and action, offering critical insights for the design of socially intelligent artificial systems. One of her most influential contributions examines how manner and path concepts co-develop across linguistic, motor, and visual attention behaviors, revealing the deeply integrated nature of early human learning. This work, which has garnered 15 citations, demonstrates that tutoring is an inherently multimodal phenomenon, a finding with far-reaching implications for both developmental psychology and machine learning. More recently, Rohlfing has turned her attention to the dynamics of explanatory dialogue between humans and robots, investigating how speakers simultaneously manage task demands and partner modeling — the cognitive balancing act that underlies truly adaptive communication. This line of inquiry positions her as a forward-thinking voice in human-robot interaction research. Through her scholarship, Rohlfing bridges fundamental questions about human cognition with practical challenges in building machines capable of learning naturally from people, making her work essential reading for researchers in linguistics, cognitive science, and AI.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
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