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The challenge to develop an integrated perspective of embodiment in communication has been taken up by an international research group hosted by Bielefeld University's Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF-Zentrum fur interdisziplinäre Forschung) from October, 2005 through September, 2006. An international conference was held there on 12-15 January, 2005 to define a research agenda that will explicitly address embodied communication in humans and machines.
Embodiment has become one of the most promising paradigms in cognitive science and a challenge to AI research. In an invitational conference hosted by the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) at Bielefeld University in Germany, 24 highly acclaimed speakers from various disciplines presented their perspectives pertaining to conceptual issues of embodiment; the phylo- and ontogenesis of communication; bodily gestures; understanding and communicating intentions, emotions, and symbols; and the role of bodily action in language and speech. The talks were centered around the two aims of the research group, namely, (1) to obtain a more profound understanding of human communication and its evolution, and (2) to study machine communication both as a means of modeling human communicative abilities and of advancing the human-technology interface.
Gestures were a central topic of the conference. Primatologist Josep Call (Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany) reported on the rich and flexible gesture repertoire of non-human primates. Psychologist Bennett Bertenthal (University of Chicago, USA), and psycholinguists Sotaro Kita (University of Bristol, UK) and Susan Duncan (University of Chicago, USA) pointed out how gestures form an intimate connection with human speech. Moreover, gestures are responsive to the gestures of...