Papers
4
Total Citations
90
H-Index
4
About
Lisa Jacquey is a leading researcher at the intersection of developmental psychology and robotics, whose work fundamentally explores how agents—both human infants and artificial systems—learn through their own actions. Her research centers on **sensorimotor contingencies** and **intrinsic motivation**, proposing that the detection of action-outcome relationships is the primary engine driving open-ended, unsupervised learning. Jacquey’s major contribution is a unified theoretical framework, operationalized in computational models, which posits that the drive to understand one’s own body and its effects on the world is the foundational prerequisite for all subsequent cognitive and motor development. Her highly cited 2019 paper (32 citations) established sensorimotor contingencies as a key developmental drive from babies to robots, while her 2018 work on “Know Your Body Through Intrinsic Goals” (27 citations) provided a groundbreaking model for how agents autonomously build a body schema. Her comprehensive 2020 review (24 citations) further solidified this paradigm by demonstrating that the ability to detect these contingencies is present from birth. By bridging empirical infant studies with robotic implementations, Jacquey’s work is not only reshaping our understanding of early human development but also providing the algorithmic principles necessary for creating truly autonomous, lifelong-learning robots.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
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- 2Know Your Body Through Intrinsic Goals27 citations · 2018
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