This book clarifies the role and relevance of the body in social interaction and cognition from
an embodied cognitive science perspective. Theories of embodied cognition have during the last
decades offered a radical shift in explanations of the human mind from traditional
computationalism to emphasizing the way cognition is shaped by the body and its sensorimotor
interaction with the surrounding social and material world. This book presents a theoretical
framework for the relational nature of embodied social cognition which is based on an
interdisciplinary approach that ranges historically in time and across different disciplines.
It includes work in cognitive science artificial intelligence phenomenology ethology
developmental psychology neuroscience social psychology linguistics communication and
gesture studies. The theoretical framework is illustrated by empirical work that provides some
detailed observational fieldwork on embodied actions captured in three different episodes of
spontaneous social interaction and cognition in situ. Furthermore the theoretical
contributions and implications of the study of embodied social cognition are discussed and
summed up. Finally the issue what it would take for an artificial system to be socially
embodied is addressed and discussed as well as the practical relevance for applications to
artificial intelligence (AI) and socially interactive technology.
