Pierre Canet

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About

Pierre Canet is a pioneering researcher in developmental psychology and human-robot interaction, with a focus on early social cognition and imitation. His work explores how humans, from birth, respond to both biological and artificial agents, bridging the gap between developmental science and robotics. Canet’s most-cited paper, “Human responses to an expressive robot” (2006, 36 citations), investigates how people engage emotionally and behaviorally with robots, laying groundwork for understanding human-robot social dynamics. His landmark study, “Human newborns match tongue protrusion of disembodied human and robotic mouths” (2010, 27 citations), provides groundbreaking evidence that newborns as young as a few days old can imitate 2D stimuli—including robotic mouths—challenging assumptions about the specificity of early imitation. This work demonstrates that infants’ matching responses are not limited to live human faces, offering critical insights into the mechanisms of social learning and the perception of animacy. Canet’s research has influenced fields from developmental psychology to artificial intelligence, with his findings cited in studies on neonatal cognition, social robotics, and embodied interaction. His contributions highlight the innate human capacity to connect with both living and non-living agents, shaping how we design robots that interact naturally with people.