Laurence Hafemeister

About

Laurence Hafemeister is a pioneering researcher in developmental robotics, focusing on how emotional and social interactions can bootstrap complex cognitive behaviors in artificial systems. Her work lies at the intersection of robotics, affective computing, and developmental psychology, with a particular emphasis on social referencing—the process by which individuals use another’s emotional cues to guide their own behavior. In her most cited paper (46 citations), she demonstrated how a robot could learn facial expression recognition and face/non-face discrimination through an imitation game, bypassing traditional supervised learning. Her subsequent studies (23 and 18 citations) showed that simple sensory-motor systems, when coupled with emotional stimuli, can give rise to sophisticated skills like joint attention and social referencing. Hafemeister’s key contribution is showing that robots can learn autonomously through emotional interactions rather than specialized algorithms, making robot learning more accessible to non-experts. Her 2010 work on using emotional interactions for visual navigation task learning further illustrates this paradigm. With a cumulative impact spanning over a decade, Hafemeister’s research continues to inspire new approaches to human-robot interaction and autonomous development.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   A Robot Learns the Facial Expressions Recognition and Face/Non-face Discrimination Through an Imitation Game

   46 citations · 2014
2. 2
   Development of First Social Referencing Skills: Emotional Interaction as a Way to Regulate Robot Behavior

   23 citations · 2014
3. 3
   Development of joint attention and social referencing

   18 citations · 2011
4. 4
   Autonomous Development of Social Referencing Skills

   11 citations · 2010
5. 5
   USING EMOTIONAL INTERACTIONS FOR VISUAL NAVIGATION TASK LEARNING

   4 citations · 2010

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links