The paper provides a summary of ourrecent research on preverbal infants (usingviolation-of-expectation and observationallearning paradigms) demonstrating that one-year-olds interpret and draw systematicinferences about other’s goal-directed actions,and can rely on such inferences when imitatingother’s actions or emulating their goals. Toaccount for these findings it is proposed that one-year-olds apply a non-mentalistic actioninterpretational system, the ’teleological stance’that represents actions by relating relevantaspects of reality (action, goal-state, andsituational constraints) through the principle ofrational action, which assumes that actionsfunction to realize goal-states by the mostefficient means available in the actor’s situation.The relevance of these research findings and theproposed theoretical model for how to realize thegoal of epigenetic robotics of building a ’sociallyrelevant’ humanoid robot is discussed.
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