Studying the Role of Embodiment in Cognition

This paper raises the question of the connection between embodiment and higher-level cognition which has been eloquently addressed before, but has not yet received much focus in the AI community. The paper then proceeds to break the question down into subparts, and address how each can be approached and studied. Finally, the paper brieey overviews two directions of our work: group behavior and imitative behavior, and describes their relation to the issue of embodiment and cognition. 1 Motivation The role of physical embodiment in cognition has long been the subject of debate. In Artiicial Intelligence (AI) it is largely accepted that embodiment has strong implications on the control strategies for generating purposive and intelligent behavior in the world. However, some theories outside AI have proposed that embodiment not only constrains but may also facilitate certain types of higher-level cognition. Evidence from neuroscience allows for postulating shared mechanisms for low-level control of embodied action (e.g., motor plans for limb movement) and higher-level cognition (e.g., abstract plans). Work in animal 1