Barbara Manini

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About

Barbara Manini is a pioneering researcher at the intersection of developmental robotics, human-robot interaction, and early language acquisition. Her work focuses on using robotic and virtual agents to address critical language-learning challenges faced by deaf infants, particularly those born to hearing parents who lack sign language fluency. Manini’s most influential paper, “Teaching Language to Deaf Infants with a Robot and a Virtual Human” (2018, 55 citations), demonstrates how socially contingent interactions with robots can mitigate the risks of cognitive and language deficits during infancy. She further advanced this field with “Multimodal Dialogue Management for Multiparty Interaction with Infants” (2018, 20 citations), where she developed dialogue management routines enabling naturalistic, multiparty conversations between agents and infants. These contributions are vital, as over 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents with limited sign language experience, making early exposure crucial. Manini’s work uniquely combines robotics, multimodal interaction, and developmental psychology to create scalable interventions for visual language learning during critical developmental periods. Her research not only pushes the boundaries of human-robot interaction but also offers transformative potential for inclusive early childhood education.