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We report on experiments and analyses dealing with the acquisition of lexical meaning in which prosodic analysis and extraction of salient words are associated with a robots sensorimotor perceptions in an attempt to ground these words in the robots own embodied sensorimotor experience. We focus here on three key areas, the selection of salient words based on prosodic clues, expression of words by the robot at a two-word stage to reflect learning and grammatically correct presentation, and an in-depth analysis of the relationship between words and the robots sensorimotor perceptions.

Modern theories on early child language acquisition tend to focus on referential words, mostly nouns, labeling concrete objects, or physical properties. In this experimental proof-ofconcept study, we show how nonreferential negation words, typically belonging to a child's first ten words, may be acquired. A childlike humanoid robot is deployed in speech-wise unconstrained interaction with naïve human participants. In agreement with psycholinguistic observations, we corroborate the hypothesis that affect plays a pivotal role in the socially distributed acquisition process where the adept conversation partner provides linguistic interpretations of the affective displays of the less adept speaker. Negation words are prosodically salient within intent interpretations that are triggered by the learner's display of affect. From there they can be picked up and used by the budding language learner which may involve the grounding of these words in the very affective states that triggered them in the first place. The pragmatic analysis of the robot's linguistic performance indicates that the correct timing of negative utterances is essential for the listener to infer the meaning of otherwise ambiguous negative utterances. In order to assess the robot's performance thoroughly comparative data from psycholinguistic studies of parent-child dyads is needed highlighting the need for further interdisciplinary work.

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Developed under interdisciplinary cooperation, the Functional Mandibular Advancer (FMA) is a new, rigid and fixed appliance for sagittal correction of the intermaxillary jaw relationship in adolescents and young adults. The appliance is non-dependent on patient compliance and is aimed at providing an alternative to the Herbst and MARA appliances. A number of designs, all based on the mechanical principle of the inclined plane combined with guide pins and allowing reactivation, were developed. The version of the appliance providing the best technical advantages was developed to the stage of practical application in patients.

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