Structured ecologies for social and linguistic development

This is a joint work of two labs that offers a perspective on developmentand learning,whichcomplements the conference’s focus on“changes in representation and processing abilities in development”. Strong background in ecological psychology allowed us to recognize the richness and multilayered structuring of infants’environment,which activelyengages themand to which infantstunetheir action-perception. We conceptualize this environment as reliable“social physics”, constituted of predictable,enacted social events, in which infantslearn to participate. Using both traditional (qualitative and quantitative) and dynamical systems methods,we show the structuring of suchevents on multiple timescales and levelsand how participatingin themsculpts thechild’s agency in the social world. We show how thisbackground allowsa fresh look on language acquisitionand how it informscomputational modellingof language emergence and models of human-robotinteraction