The Development of Embodied Cognition: Six Lessons from Babies
Artificial LifePublished 1 January 2005
Linda B. Smith, Michael Gasser
Citations597
SJR quartileQ3
SJR score0.34
SNIP0.77
Generate an AI Snapshot to get a quick, structured summary of this paper.
Study Snapshot
ObjectiveStudy objective
MethodsResearch methodology
PopulationPopulation studied
Sample sizeSample sizes
OutcomesStudy outcomes here
ResultsStudy results comes here
LimitationsResearch study limitations comes here
A concise AI-generated summary of the paper will appear here once you click Generate AI Snapshot.
TL;DR
It is argued that starting as a baby grounded in a physical, social, and linguistic world is crucial to the development of the flexible and inventive intelligence that characterizes humankind.
Abstract
The embodiment hypothesis is the idea that intelligence emerges in the interaction of an agent with an environment and as a result of sensorimotor activity. We offer six lessons for developing embodied intelligent agents suggested by research in developmental psychology. We argue that starting as a baby grounded in a physical, social, and linguistic world is crucial to the development of the flexible and inventive intelligence that characterizes humankind.
Keywords
PsychologyNeuroscience
MIT Press eBooksIntroduction to Reinforcement Learning
6,868 Citations1998Richard S. Sutton, Andrew G. Barto
In Reinforcement Learning, Richard Sutton and Andrew Barto provide a clear and simple account of the key ideas and algorithms of reinforcement learning.
Choice Reviews OnlineApprenticeship in thinking: cognitive development in social context
5,499 Citations1990
The International Journal of Robotics ResearchPassive Dynamic Walking
3,366 Citations1990Tad McGeer
The dynamics are most clearly demonstrated by a machine powered only by gravity, but they can be combined easily with active energy input to produce efficient and dextrous walking over a broad range of terrain.
Behavioral and Brain SciencesA sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness
3,083 Citations2001J. Kevin Ο’Regan, Alva Noë
It is proposed that seeing is a way of acting, which provides a natural and principled way of accounting for visual consciousness, and for the differences in the perceived quality of sensory experience in the different sensory modalities.
CognitionLearning and development in neural networks: the importance of starting small
2,017 Citations1993Jeffrey L. Elman
Possible synergistic interactions between maturational change and the ability to learn a complex domain (language) as investigated in connectionist networks suggest that developmental restrictions on resources may constitute a necessary prerequisite for mastering certain complex domains.
The MIT Press eBooksDesigning Sociable Robots
1,539 Citations2002Cynthia Breazeal
Cynthia Breazeal presents her vision of the sociable robot of the future, a synthetic creature and not merely a sophisticated tool, and defines the key components of social intelligence for these machines and offers a framework and set of design issues for their realization.
Cognitive PsychologyChildren's use of mutual exclusivity to constrain the meanings of words
1,310 Citations1988Ellen M. Markman, Gwyn F Wachtel
Mutual exclusivity motivates children to learn terms for attributes, substances, and parts as well as for objects themselves.
Choice Reviews OnlineUnderstanding intelligence
1,298 Citations1991
Rolf Pfeifer and Christian Scheier provide a systematic introduction to this new way of thinking about intelligence and computers and derive a set of principles and a coherent framework for the study of naturally and artificially intelligent systems, or autonomous agents.
Behavioral and Brain SciencesDeictic codes for the embodiment of cognition
1,094 Citations1997Dana H. Ballard, Mary Hayhoe +2 more
Behavioral and Brain SciencesThe dynamics of embodiment: A field theory of infant perseverative reaching
1,061 Citations2001Esther Thelen, Gregor Schöner +2 more
It is demonstrated that the A-not-B error and its previously puzzling contextual variations can be understood by the coupled dynamics of the ordinary processes of goal-directed actions: looking, planning, reaching, and remembering.
Psychological ScienceObject name Learning Provides On-the-Job Training for Attention
641 Citations2002Linda B. Smith, Susan S. Jones +3 more
Two experiments tested the proposal that experience in learning object names tunes children's attention to the properties relevant for naming—in the present case, to the property of shape—and thus facilitates the learning of more object names.
CognitionU-shaped learning and frequency effects in a multi-layered perception: Implications for child language acquisition
633 Citations1991Kim Plunkett, Virginia A. Marchman
The results suggest that it is unlikely that a single-layered perceptron is capable of finding an adequate solution to the problem of mapping stems and past tense forms in input configurations that are sufficiently analogous to English.
Lecture notes in computer scienceThe Cog Project: Building a Humanoid Robot
569 Citations1999Rodney A. Brooks, Cynthia Breazeal +3 more
This chapter gives a background on the methodology that the authors have used in investigations, highlights the research issues that have been raised during this project, and provides a summary of both the current state of the project and the long-term goals.
Developmental PsychologyEarly referential understanding: Infants' ability to recognize referential acts for what they are.
517 Citations1993Dare A. Baldwin
Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesSpoken word production: A theory of lexical access
512 Citations2001Willem J. M. Levelt
The theory of lexical access covers a sequence of processing stages beginning with the speaker's focusing on a target concept and ending with the initiation of articulation, which provides a handle on the analysis of multiword utterance production as well as a guide to the analysis and design of neuroimaging studies of spoken utterances production.
British Journal of PsychologyMicro‐affordance: The potentiation of components of action by seen objects
501 Citations2000Rob Ellis, Mike Tucker
It is suggested that seen objects potentiate a range of actions associated with them, irrespective of the intentions of the viewer, and the effects of the seen objects on components of action are described as microaffordances which are said to be dispositional states of the viewers nervous system.
Psychological ReviewKnowing in the context of acting: The task dynamics of the A-not-B error.
468 Citations1999Linda B. Smith, Esther Thelen +2 more
The authors propose that the perseverative reach back to A is the product of the processes that take a hand to a location in visual space: the body-centered nature of the spatial code, memories for previous reaching activity, and the close coupling of looking and reaching.
CognitionEarly noun vocabularies: do ontology, category structure and syntax correspond?
458 Citations1999Larissa K. Samuelson, Linda B. Smith
It is found that children between 17 and 33 months of age do not systematically generalize names for solid things by shape similarity until they already know many nouns, and do not dismantle names for non-solid substances by material similarity.
Developmental PsychologyMother-infant face-to-face interaction: Influence is bidirectional and unrelated to periodic cycles in either partner's behavior.
374 Citations1988Jeffrey F. Cohn, Edward Z. Tronick
CognitionRepresentation, space and Hollywood Squares: looking at things that aren't there anymore
369 Citations2000Daniel C. Richardson, Michael J. Spivey
Five experiments where location is irrelevant to the task, and participants' encoding of spatial information is measured implicitly by their looking behavior during recall are presented, and the notion of a cognitive-perceptual system using spatial indexes to exploit the stability of the external world is considered.
NatureInstructed learning in the auditory localization pathway of the barn owl
320 Citations2002Eric I. Knudsen
In barn owls, the visual system is important in teaching the auditory system how to translate cues, and this example of instructed plasticity is highly quantifiable and demonstrates mechanisms and principles of learning that may be used widely throughout the central nervous system.
Developmental PsychologyPerceiving bimodally specified events in infancy.
293 Citations1979Elizabeth S. Spelke
Cognitive ScienceStructure and Content in Language Production: A Theory of Frame Constraints in Phonological Speech Errors
279 Citations1993Gary S. Dell, Cornell Juliano +1 more
A connectionist or parallel distributed proceesing (PDP) model that learns to produce sequences of phonological features that exhibit some of the properties of human speech errors.
Advances in child development and behaviorReactivation of Infant Memory: Implications for Cognitive Development
240 Citations1987Carolyn Rovee‐Collier, Harlene Haye
It is shown that procedures that tap long-term memory yield a picture of infant memory radically different from that provided by paradigms involving measures of visual attention.
Cognitive ScienceShareability: The Social Psychology of Epistemology*
214 Citations1983Jennifer J. Freyd
SciencePsychomotor Coordination of Auditory and Visual Space at Birth
204 Citations1961Michael Wertheimer
Before it was 10 minutes old, a human neonate was able to turn its eyes in the direction of an auditory stimulus, demonstrating that learning is not essential for a crude form of auditory localization, directional oculomotor response, and coordination of auditory and visual functioning.
Developmental PsychologyStatistical regularities in vocabulary guide language acquisition in connectionist models and 15-20-month-olds.
186 Citations2002Larissa K. Samuelson
Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & PerformanceThe development origins of bimanual coordination: A dynamic perspective.
168 Citations1996Daniela Corbetta, Esther Thelen
It was found that patterns of interlimb coordination in reaching matched coordination tendencies in nonreaching, and it was argued that changing coordination tendencies may influence the organization of specific goal-oriented behaviors from early in life.
Developmental ScienceThe intersensory origins of word‐comprehension: an ecological–dynamic systems view
162 Citations2001Lakshmi Gogate, Arlene S. Walker‐Andrews +1 more
Cognitive ScienceAn Embodied Model for Sensorimotor Grounding and Grounding Transfer: Experiments With Epigenetic Robots
161 Citations2006Angelo Cangelosi, Thomas Riga
This article presents an embodied model for the grounding of language in action based on epigenetic robots, and demonstrates how new, higher order behavioral abilities can be autonomously built on previously grounded basic action categories following linguistic interaction with human users.
InfancyIntersensory Redundancy and 7‐Month‐Old Infants' Memory for Arbitrary Syllable‐Object Relations
147 Citations2001Lakshmi Gogate, Lorraine E. Bahrick
Developmental PsychologyAudition and visual attention: The developmental trajectory in deaf and hearing populations.
145 Citations1998Linda B. Smith, Alexandra L. Quittner +2 more
Monographs of the Society for Research in Child DevelopmentThe Relation between Audition and Vision in the Human Newborn
128 Citations1976Morton J. Mendelson, Marshall M. Haith +1 more
It was concluded that sound influences visual epistemic behavior even at birth, and infants were sensitive to the spatial property of sound.
Behavioral and Brain SciencesThe neural basis of predicate-argument structure
113 Citations2003James R. Hurford
The provision by the brain's sensory/perceptual systems of about four variables for temporary assignment to objects, and the separate processes of perceptual categorization of the objects so identified, constitute a pre-adaptive platform on which an early system for the linguistic description of scenes developed.
The Nature and Ontogenesis of Meaning
109 Citations2023Willis F. Overton, David S. Palermo
Journal of Developmental & Behavioral PediatricsThe Role of Developmental Limitations of Sensory Input on Sensory/Perceptual Organization
81 Citations1985Gerald Turkewitz, Patricia A. Kenny
It is contention that, during normal development, limitations provide an organizational framework which enhances perceptual development, and that providing additional stimulation to prematurely born infants may, in fact, be harmful.
Developmental ScienceThe dynamic lift of developmental process
74 Citations2006Linda B. Smith, Cynthia Breazeal
Three principles potentially essential to building human-like intelligence are considered: the heterogeneity of the component processes, the embedding of development in a social world, and developmental processes that change the cognitive system as a function of the history of soft-assemblies of these heterogeneous processes in specific tasks.
What Is a Conceptual System?
54 Citations2023George Lakoff
DigitalCommons - WayneState (Wayne State University)Mothers' and Infants' Spontaneous Vocal, Verbal,and Action Imitation During the Second Year
48 Citations1999Elise Frank Masur, Jennifer E. Rodemaker
Analyses of dyadic correspondence, stability over time, and consistency across contexts in verbal imitation provided evidence for the emergence of an imitative conversational style in some mothers and infants.
Connection ScienceThe social body in motion: cognitive development in infants and androids
29 Citations2006Jessica Lindblom, Tom Ziemke
It is argued 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’.
The 2006 IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Network ProceedingsLanguage Acquisition and Symbol Grounding Transfer with Neural Networks and Cognitive Robots
29 Citations2006Angelo Cangelosi, Emmanouil Hourdakis +1 more
A new model of symbol grounding transfer in cognitive robots is presented, demonstrating that robots are able to acquire new action concepts via linguistic instructions by autonomously transferring the grounding from directly grounded action names to new higher-order composite actions.
Second-order generalization
2 Citations2005R.S. Neville
The research presents a new theory, which utilises information inheritance in order to perform second-order generalization, and presents the theory behind a recognition system, which performs recognition without learning.