Yohko Shimada
Papers
1
Total Citations
81
H-Index
1
About
Dr. Yohko Shimada is a pioneering researcher at the intersection of developmental psychology and human-robot interaction, whose work fundamentally explores how children perceive and learn from artificial agents. Her most influential study, "How to Build an Intentional Android: Infants' Imitation of a Robot's Goal‐Directed Actions" (2008, 81 citations), demonstrated that toddlers as young as 24 months can infer and imitate a robot's intended goals, even when the robot fails to complete an action—a landmark finding that reshaped our understanding of early social cognition. By showing that children attribute intentionality to non-human agents, Shimada’s research bridges critical gaps in developmental theory and robotics design. Her work has profound implications for creating more intuitive, child-friendly AI and educational technologies, influencing fields from cognitive science to artificial intelligence. With her innovative experimental paradigms, Shimada continues to illuminate how the youngest minds interpret and learn from the machines that increasingly populate their world.
Research Focus
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Top Papers
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