This chapter introduces the implementations of artificial agents in robotics. The first section looks at the early development of robotics in GOFAI (Good Old-Fashioned AI). SHAKEY is a representative example designed to operate and perform simple tasks in the real world, which illustrates the physical symbol system hypothesis. The second section introduces alternative ideas from situated cognition theorists. The ideas are inspired by studies on simple cognitive systems such as those of insects, to pursue simple architecture robotics that can solve complex problems. The third section reviews how these theoretical ideas have been translated into particular robotic architectures, focusing on subsumption architectures and some examples of behavior-based robotics.

In the preceding chapters we have reviewed in some detail the various features of language that people use to produce and understand linguistic messages. Where is this ability to use language located? The obvious answer is “in the brain.” However, it can’t be just anywhere in the brain. For example, it can’t be where damage was done to the right hemisphere of the patient’s brain in Alice Flaherty’s description. The woman could no longer recognize her own leg, but she could still talk about it. The ability to talk was unimpaired and hence clearly located somewhere else in her brain.

This chapter introduces mindreading (the ability to understand others' thoughts and to interact with them socially). The first section looks at childrens' pretend play behavior and how it is explained by Leslie's metarepresentation models. The second section addresses the false belief test, which was developed to detect whether young children can understand that other people might hold misleading information about their environment. The third section introduces Baron-Cohen's model of the mindreading system, explaining data from different paradigms, such as the false belief test in normal or autistic children. The fourth section looks at an alternative approach -- the simulation theory, which hypothesizes that we predict other people by simulating how we would react if we received the same information. The last section reviews recent neural evidence on mindreading mechanisms.

As the last chapter of this book, we introduce some exciting and under-explored areas of future cognitive science. The first section reviews current large brain imaging databases elicited from the Human Connectome Project (HCP) movement. The second section focuses on the brain's resting state, called the default mode networks (DMN). The third section looks at the development of neuroprosthesis and how cognitive scientists can cooperate with interdisciplinary researchers in robotic engineering and brain--computer interfaces. The fourth section looks at cognitive science and the law, while the last section looks at self-driving vehicles.

In the preceding chapter, we investigated the physical production of speech sounds in terms of the articulatory mechanisms of the human vocal tract. That investigation was possible because of some rather amazing facts about the nature of language. When we considered the human vocal tract, we didn’t have to specify whether we were talking about a fairly large person, over 6 feet tall, weighing over 200 pounds, or about a rather small person, about 5 feet tall, weighing less than 100 pounds. Yet those two physically different individuals would inevitably have physically different vocal tracts, in terms of size and shape. In a sense, every individual has a physically different vocal tract. Consequently, in purely physical terms, every individual will pronounce sounds differently. There are, then, potentially millions of physically different ways of saying the simple word me.

In Chapter 9, we focused on referential meaning and the relationships between words. There are other aspects of meaning that depend more on context and the communicative intentions of speakers. In Gill Brown’s story, the American tourists and the Scottish boy seem to be using the word war with essentially the same basic meaning. However, the boy was using the word to refer to something the tourists didn’t expect, hence the initial misunderstanding. Communication clearly depends on not only recognizing the meaning of words in an utterance, but also recognizing what speakers mean by their utterances in a particular context. The study of what speakers mean, or “speaker meaning,” is called pragmatics.

However, we have not accounted for the fact that the three words in this phrase can only be combined in a particular sequence. We recognize that the phrase the lucky boys is a well-formed phrase in contemporary English, but that the following two “phrases” are not at all well-formed.

This chapter explores the recent shift in cognitive science toward the brain. The first two sections introduce the rudiments of brain anatomy and then explore Ungerleider and Mishkin's two visual systems hypothesis. Their work provides neural evidence of the two visual pathways (ventral and dorsal routes) in the brain from animal studies. The third section introduces the parallel distributed processing model of cognition introduced by Rumelhart, McClelland, and the PDP group. This model, and what came to be known as artificial neural networks, provide a powerful theoretical explanation of how the brain might process information. The last three sections are focused on early brain imaging studies on cognitive functions. First, Petersen and his colleagues used PET to detect how different brain regions respond to different stages of lexical processing. Next, Brewer and his colleagues localized the brain regions in memory tasks using event-related fMRI. Finally, Logothetis and his colleagues' exploration of the neural correlates of the BOLD signal suggests that fMRI signals could be a function of the input to neural regions rather than of neural firing.

The creation of new words in a language never stops and English is one language that is particularly fond of adding to its large vocabulary. Traditionally, we would check in a dictionary to be sure that we were using the right word, with correct spelling, but technological advances have provided us with programs that do the checking for us, or, even more insidiously, as in the situation described by Mary Norris above, try to choose the words for us. Unfortunately, at the moment, these programs do not seem to have any way of knowing if the words that are chosen are appropriate or if it is quite normal to send someone a communication out of the blue that reads “cute nachos.” In this chapter, we won’t solve the problem of inappropriate choice of words, but we will look in some detail at how those words came to be part of the language.

There are a lot of stories about creatures that can talk. We usually assume that they are fantasy or fiction or that they involve birds or animals simply imitating something they have heard humans say (as Terrence Deacon discovered was the case with the loud seal in the Boston Aquarium). Yet we believe that creatures can communicate, certainly with other members of their own species. Is it possible that a creature could learn to communicate with humans using language? Or does human language have properties that make it so unique that it is quite unlike any other communication system and hence unlearnable by any other creature? To answer these questions, we first look at some special properties of human language, then review a number of experiments in communication involving humans and animals.

The type of sociolinguistic variation described in Chapter 19 is sometimes attributed to cultural differences. It is not unusual to find aspects of language identified as characteristic features of African American culture or European culture or Japanese culture or multicultural communities. This approach to the study of language originates in the work of anthropologists who have used language as a source of information in the general study of “culture.”