Embodied Communication in Humans and Machines

Abstract

The aim of this book is to launch and explore a new integrated and interdisciplinary perspective, the Embodied Communication Perspective. The core claim of the Embodied Communication perspective is that human communication involves parallel and highly interactive couplings between communication partners. These couplings range from low-level systems for performing and understanding instrumental actions, like the mirror system, to higher systems that interpret symbols in a cultural context.\nThe embodied communication perspective creates a new framework to reinterpret empirical findings in the cognitive and neurosciences, and to integrate findings from different research fields that have explored similar topics without much crosstalk between them. At the same time, the embodied communication perspective can serve as a guide for engineers who construct artificial agents and robots which should be able to interact with humans.