As infants, each one of us developed the ability to move our muscles to manipulate objects and also to communicate with gestures and speech. A key theoretical issue in this area is: did we learn to perceive and produce gestures for manipulation and speech independently, or are these two learning processes linked? The CONTACT project is an ambitious attempt to investigate the parallel development of manipulatory and speech-related motor acts from a multi-disciplinary perspective. It involves a tight collaboration of experts in robotics, neuroscience and child-development. The project is designed to test the hypothesis that fundamentally similar mechanisms are involved in the development of perception and production for both speech and manipulation.

The basic scientific incentive behind the work is to increase theoretical understanding of this crucial aspect of child development. Practical benefits could include a radical change and improvement in the way that automated speech recognition systems and visual action interpretation systems are built. The work may also improve the diagnosis and understanding of speech-related learning disabilities.