Towards a more natural and intelligent interface with embodied conversation agent

Conversational agent also known as chatterbots are computer programs which are designed to converse like a human as much as their intelligent allows. In many ways, they are the embodiment of Turing's vision. The ability for computers to converse with human users using natural language would arguably increase their usefulness. Recent advances in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in general have advances this field in realizing the vision of a more humanoid interactive system. This paper presents and discusses the use of embodied conversation agent (ECA) for the imitation games. This paper also presents the technical design of our ECA and its performance. In the interactive media industry, it can also been observed that the ECA are getting popular

Embodied cognition through cultural interaction

In this short paper we describe a robotic setup to study the self-organization of conceptualisation and language. What distinguishes this project from others is that we envision a robot with specic cognitive capacities, but without resorting to any pre-programmed representations or conceptualisations. The key to this all is self-organization and enculturation. We report preliminary results on learning motor behaviours through imitation, and sketch how the language plays a pivoting role in constructing world representations

Metamimetic Games : Modeling Metadynamics in Social Cognition

Imitation is fundamental in the understanding of social system dynamics. But the diversity of imitation rules employed by modelers proves that the modeling of mimetic processes cannot avoid the traditional problem of endogenization of all the choices, including the one of the mimetic rules. Starting from the remark that human reflexive capacities are the ground for a new class of mimetic rules, I propose a formal framework, metamimetic games, that enable to endogenize the distribution of imitation rules while being human specific. The corresponding concepts of equilibrium - counterfactually stable state - and attractor are introduced. Finally, I give an interpretation of social differentiation in terms of cultural co-evolution among a set of possible motivations, which departs from the traditional view of optimization indexed to criteria that exist prior to the activity of agents.Social cognition, imitation, cultural co-evolution, differentiation, reflexivity, metacognition, stochastic game theory, endogenous distributions, metamimetic games, counterfactual equilibrium.

Metamimetic Games: Modeling Metadynamics in Social Cognition

Imitation is fundamental in the understanding of social systems' dynamics. But the diversity of imitation rules employed by modelers proves that the modeling of mimetic processes cannot avoid the traditional problem of endogenization of all the choices, including the one of the mimetic rules. Starting from the remark that metacognition and human reflexive capacities are the ground for a new class of mimetic rules, we propose a formal framework, metamimetic games, that enables to endogenize the distribution of imitation rules while being human specific. The corresponding concepts of equilibrium — counterfactually stable state — and attractor are introduced. Finally, we give an interpretation of social differenciation in terms of cultural co-evolution among a set of possible motivations, which departs from the traditional view of optimization indexed to immutable criteria that exist prior to the activity of agents.Social Cognition, Imitation, Cultural Co-Evolution, Differentiation, Reflexivity, Metacognition, Stochastic Game Theory, Endogenous Distributions, Metamimetic Games, Counterfactual Equilibrium

Communicative Acts Performance of an Indonesian Child

This study attempts to describe the communicative acts of an Indonesian child by using the coding system of speech acts proposed by Ninio and Snow. The data are the subject\u27s spoken utterances which were recorded. The findings show that the subject performed (in frequency of occurrence order) Questions and Responses (33.96%), Directives and Responses (25.15%), Statements and Responses (19.49%), Markings and Responses (7.54%0), Evaluations (5.66%), Commitments and Responses (5.66%), Declarations and Responses (1.25%), and Speech Elicitations and Responses (1.25%). The Performances and Demands for Clarifications were not performed by the subject at all

Gesture production and comprehension in children with specific language impairment

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have difficulties with spoken language. However, some recent research suggests that these impairments reflect underlying cognitive limitations. Studying gesture may inform us clinically and theoretically about the nature of the association between language and cognition. A total of 20 children with SLI and 19 typically developing (TD) peers were assessed on a novel measure of gesture production. Children were also assessed for sentence comprehension errors in a speech-gesture integration task. Children with SLI performed equally to peers on gesture production but performed less well when comprehending integrated speech and gesture. Error patterns revealed a significant group interaction: children with SLI made more gesture-based errors, whilst TD children made semantically based ones. Children with SLI accessed and produced lexically encoded gestures despite having impaired spoken vocabulary and this group also showed stronger associations between gesture and language than TD children. When SLI comprehension breaks down, gesture may be relied on over speech, whilst TD children have a preference for spoken cues. The findings suggest that for children with SLI, gesture scaffolds are still more related to language development than for TD peers who have out-grown earlier reliance on gestures. Future clinical implications may include standardized assessment of symbolic gesture and classroom based gesture support for clinical groups

Agent-Based Modeling of the El Farol Bar Problem

In this paper, we study the self-coordination problem as demonstrated by the well-known El Farol problem (Arthur, 1994), which has later become what is known as the minority game in the econophysics community. While the El Farol problem or the minority game has been studied for almost two decades, existing studies are mostly only concerned with efficiency. The equality issue, however, has been largely neglected. In this paper, we build an agent-based model to study both efficiency and equality and ask whether a decentralized society can ever possibly self-coordinate a result with the highest efficiency while also maintaining the highest degree of equality. Our agent-based model shows the possibility of achieving this social optimum. The two key determinants to make this happen are social preferences and social networks. Hence, not only doe institutions (networks) matter, but individual characteristics (preferences) also matter. The latter are open to human-subject experiments for further examination.El Farol Bar problem, Social Preferences, Social Networks, Self-Organization, Emergence of Coordination.