Angelo Cangelosi - Developmental Robotics for Language Learning, Trust and Theory of Mind

CITEC Summer School 2017 on Cognitive Architectures.

Keynote by

Prof. Angelo Cangelosi, Ph.D.: Developmental Robotics for Language Learning, Trust and Theory of Mind

This talk presents recent research on the development of language and theory of mind skills for communication and trust in developmental robots and human-robot interaction (Cangelosi & Schlesinger 2015).

For a communication point of view, ample theoretical and experimental research on action and language processing and on number learning and gestures clearly demonstrates the role of embodiment in cognition and language processing. In psychology and neuroscience this evidence constitutes the basis of embodied cognition, also known as grounded cognition (Pezzulo et al. 2012; Borghi & Cangelosi 2014). Another key developmental milestone is the acquisition of theory of mind (ToM) and its effect in the building of trust, which also benefits from a sictuated, embodied approach. During the talk we will first present examples of developmental robotics models and experimental results from iCub experiments on the embodiment biases in early word acquisition and grammar learning (Morse et al. 2015; Morse & Cangelosi 2017) and experiments on pointing gestures and finger counting for number learning (De La Cruz et al. 2014).

We will then present a novel developmental model, and experiments, on ToM and its use for autonomous trust behavior in robots. The implications for the use of such embodied approaches for embodied cognition, intersubjectivity and for robot companion applications will also be discussed.

Discussion moderated by Prof. Dr. Helge Ritter. Neuroinformatics