The Emergence of Self-Awareness: Insights from Robotics

Abstract The ability for self-related thought is historically considered to be a uniquely human characteristic. Nonetheless, as technological knowledge advances, it comes as no surprise that the plausibility of humanoid self-awareness is not only theoretically explored but also engineered. Could the emerging behavioural and cognitive capabilities in artificial agents be comparable to humans? By employing a cross-disciplinary approach, the present essay aims to address this question by providing a comparative overview on the emergence of self-awareness as demonstrated in early childhood and robotics. It argues that developmental psychologists can gain invaluable theoretical and methodological insights by considering the relevance of artificial agents in better understanding the behavioural manifestations of human self-consciousness.

• Publication year

  2024

• Venue

  Human Development

• Publication date

  2024-02-26

• Fields of study

  Not labeled

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1159/000538027
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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