Caregiver’s sensorimotor magnets lead infant’s vowel acquisition through auto mirroring

Abstract

Mother-infant vocal communication is a sort of mystery of human cognitive development since they can communicate although their body structures and therefore their utterable areas are different. This paper proposes a method that aids unconscious guidance in mutual imitation for infant development based on a biasing element with two different kinds of modules. The first is based on the normal magnet effect in perceiving heard vocal sounds as the listenerpsilas own vowels (perceptual magnet) and also includes another magnet effect for imitating vocal sounds that resemble the imitatorpsilas vowels (articulatory magnet). The second is based on what we call ldquoauto mirroring bias,rdquo by which the heard vowel is much closer to the expected vowel because the otherpsilas utterance is an imitation of the listenerpsilas own utterance. Computer simulation results of mother-infant interaction show the validity of the proposed bias. Finally future issues are discussed.