Imitation and Social Learning in Robots, Humans and Animals: Behavioural, Social and Communicative Dimensions

by Edited by Chrystopher L. Nehaniv , Kerstin Dautenhahn

• ISBN13: 9780521108638
• ISBN10: 0521108632
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-04-09
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Mechanisms of imitation and social matching play a fundamental role in development, communication, interaction, learning and culture. Their investigation in different agents (animals, humans and robots) has significantly influenced our understanding of the nature and origins of social intelligence. Whilst such issues have traditionally been studied in areas such as psychology, biology and ethnology, it has become increasingly recognised that a 'constructive approach' towards imitation and social learning via the synthesis of artificial agents can provide important insights into mechanisms and create artefacts that can be instructed and taught by imitation, demonstration, and social interaction rather than by explicit programming. This book studies increasingly sophisticated models and mechanisms of social matching behaviour and marks an important step towards the development of an interdisciplinary research field, consolidating and providing a valuable reference for the increasing number of researchers in the field of imitation and social learning in robots, humans and animals.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The constructive interdisciplinary viewpoint for understanding mechanisms and models of imitation and social learning

Correspondence Problems and Mechanisms

Imitation: thoughts about theories

Nine billion correspondence problems

Challenges and issues faced in building a framework for conducting research in learning from observation

Mirroring and 'Mind-Reading'

A neural architecture for imitation and intentional relations

Simulation theory of understanding others: a robotics perspective

Mirrors and matchings: imitation from the perspective of mirror-self-recognition and the parietal region's involvement in both

What to Imitate

The question of 'what to imitate': inferring goals and intentions from demonstrations

Learning of gestures by imitation in a humanoid robot

The dynamic emergence of categories through imitation

Development and Embodiment

Copying strategies by people with autistic spectrum disorder: why only imitation leads to social cognitive development Justin

A bayesian model of imitation in infants and robots

Solving the correspondence problem in robotic imitation across embodiments: synchrony, perception and culture in artefacts Aris Alissandrakis

Synchrony and Turn-Taking as Communicative Mechanisms

How to build an imitator?

Simulated turn-taking and development of styles of motion

Bullying behaviour, empathy and imitation: an attempted synthesis

Why Imitate? Motivations

Multiple motivations for imitation in infancy

The progress drive hypothesis: an interpretation of early imitation

Social Feedback

Training behaviour by imitation: from parrots to people ... to robots?

Task learning through imitation and human-robot interaction

The Ecological Context

Emulation learning: the integration of technical and social cognition

Mimicry as deceptive resemblance: beyond the one-trick ponies

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