Embodied cognition is a hot topic in both cognitive science and AI, despite the fact that there still is relatively little consensus regarding what exactly constitutes 'embodiment'. While most embodied AI and cognitive robotics research views the body as the physical/sensorimotor interface that allows to ground computational cognitive processes in sensorimotor interactions with the environment,...

How do English as a lingua franca (ELF) speakers achieve multimodal cohesion on the basis of their specific interests and cultural backgrounds? From a dialogic and collaborative view of communication, this study focuses on how verbal and nonverbal modes cohere together during intercultural conversations. The data include approximately 160-minute transcribed video recordings of ELF interactions ...

This paper presents the principle of symbol grounding in robots. If a robot does not understand words, the robot cannot autonomously talk in the physical world. Understanding language symbols is a necessary condition for autonomous conversations. First, how humans understand language symbols is briefly studied. Humans’ symbol manipulation is based on imagination. Recent brain science shows that...

The theory of embodied computation, like the theory of embodied cognition, provides opportunities as well as challenges. On one hand, such computation is intimately connected with its physical realization, both because postMoore’s Law densities demand more direct exploitation of physical processes, but also because the purposes of embodied computing are often physical (e.g., self-assembly, micr...

Western culture has inherited a view of understanding as an intellectual cognitive operation of grasping of concepts and their relations. However, cognitive science research has shown that this received intellectualist conception is substantially out of touch with how humans actually make and experience meaning. The view emerging from the mind sciences recognizes that understanding is profoundl...