Mental Tracking: A Computational Model of Spatial Development

Psychological experiments on children's development of spatial knowledge suggest experience at self-locomotion with visual tracking as important factors. Yet, the mechanism underlying development is unknown. We propose a robot that learns to mentally track a target object (i.e., maintaining a representation of an object's position when outside the field-of-view) as a model for spatial development. Mental tracking is considered as prediction of an object's position given the previous environmental state and motor commands, and the current environment state resulting from movement. Following Jordan and Rumelhart's (1992) forward modeling architecture the system consists of two components: an inverse model of sensory input to desired motor commands; and a forward model of motor commands to desired sensory input (goals). The robot was tested on the "three cups" paradigm (where children are required to select the cup containing the hidden object under various ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1997
• Where: IJCAI
• Authors: Kazuo Hiraki, Akio Sashima, Steven Phillips
• Keywords: IJCAI 1997, IJCAI 2007, Motor Commands, Object's Position, Sensory Input