Embodied Communication in Humans and Machines

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 für 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. 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 others, coupling speakers and listeners in a close "social loop" in which a realtime processing of bodily signals seems at least as important as semantic analysis of words and sentences.