Acquisition of meanings of words such as "what is this" by a virtual robot: toward constructing of artificial consciousness

We describe a virtual robot that acquires meanings of words, and discuss that the robot shows an introspective conscious behavior. We first argue what outputs of the robot demonstrate that it has learned meanings of words such as "what is this". Then we explain functions of the robot that enable the robot to make outputs as if it has learned meanings of questions. The functions include 1) forming of linked lists (associations) among observed features, robotic actions, and words, 2) generalizing the associations to form generalized associations, and 3) applying an association and a generalized association to a new situation by making the generalized association match words, observed features, and actions in die new situation.