The paper provides a summary of our
recent research on preverbal infants (using
violation-of-expectation and observational
learning paradigms) demonstrating that one-year-olds interpret and draw systematic
inferences about other’s goal-directed actions,
and can rely on such inferences when imitating
other’s actions or emulating their goals. To
account for these findings it is proposed that one-year-olds apply a non-mentalistic action
interpretational system, the ’teleological stance’
that represents actions by relating relevant
aspects of reality (action, goal-state, and
situational constraints) through the principle of
rational action, which assumes that actions
function to realize goal-states by the most
efficient means available in the actor’s situation.
The relevance of these research findings and the
proposed theoretical model for how to realize the
goal of epigenetic robotics of building a ’socially
relevant’ humanoid robot is discussed