
46 Coverbal Synchrony in Human-Machine Interaction
currently used in neuroscience and psychoanalysis. The ability to
mentalize is defined as the ability to understand and interpret one’s
own behavior and the behavior of other people through ascribing
mental states like thought, emotions, aims or wishes. This is a more
application-oriented concept than Dennett’s explanations and is used
quite often for empirical research (Fonagy et al., 2002).
Apart from the implicit nature of humans ascribing mental states
towards technical systems, the examples above show how humans
develop even close, socio-emotional relations with technical systems.
This can ...