Abstract

Adopting a functionalist perspective, we emphasize the interest of considering imitation as a single capacity with two functions: communication and learning. These two functions both imply such capacities as detection of novelty, attraction toward moving stimuli and perception-action coupling. We propose that the main difference between the processes involved in the two functions is that, in the case of learning, the dynamics is internal to the system constituted by an individual whereas in the case of communication, the dynamics concerns the system composed by the perception of one individual coupled with the action of the other.In this paper, we compare the first developmental steps of imitation in three populations: typically developing children, children with autism, and robots. We show evidence of strong correlations between imitating and being imitated in typical infants and low-functioning children with autism. Relying on this evidence, the robotic perspective is to provide a generic architecture able not only to learn via imitation but also to interact as an emerging property of the system constituted by two similar architectures with a different history.