Robert Soussignan

Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Sorbonne Université

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About

Robert Soussignan is a leading figure in developmental psychology and affective science, with a particular focus on the origins of emotional communication and social cognition. His research bridges the gap between human and artificial agents, exploring how infants and children perceive and respond to emotional expressions. A major contribution is his groundbreaking work on neonatal imitation, providing the first evidence that human newborns can match tongue protrusion gestures from 2D stimuli, including both human and robotic faces. This finding, published in a highly influential paper (27 citations), challenges previous assumptions about the perceptual and motor capacities of newborns, suggesting an innate, cross-modal mechanism for social learning. Soussignan’s work also extends to human-robot interaction, as seen in his study "Human responses to an expressive robot" (36 citations), which examines how adults react to robotic emotional displays. By systematically comparing responses to robotic versus human expressions, he has illuminated the critical role of movement and biological motion in eliciting empathy and social engagement. His research, including work on children’s responses to robotic faces (4 citations), has profound implications for developmental robotics and our understanding of the building blocks of social intelligence.