Proceedings of the 2004 ONR Decision-Support Workshop Series: Interoperability

In August of 1998 the Collaborative Agent Design Research Center (CADRC) of the California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly), approached Dr. Phillip Abraham of the Office of Naval Research (ONR) with the proposal for an annual workshop focusing on emerging concepts in decision-support systems for military applications. The proposal was considered timely by the ONR Logistics Program Office for at least two reasons. First, rapid advances in information systems technology over the past decade had produced distributed collaborative computer-assistance capabilities with profound potential for providing meaningful support to military decision makers. Indeed, some systems based on these new capabilities such as the Integrated Marine Multi-Agent Command and Control System (IMMACCS) and the Integrated Computerized Deployment System (ICODES) had already reached the field-testing and final product stages, respectively. Second, over the past two decades the US Navy and Marine Corps had been increasingly challenged by missions demanding the rapid deployment of forces into hostile or devastate dterritories with minimum or non-existent indigenous support capabilities. Under these conditions Marine Corps forces had to rely mostly, if not entirely, on sea-based support and sustainment operations. Particularly today, operational strategies such as Operational Maneuver From The Sea (OMFTS) and Sea To Objective Maneuver (STOM) are very much in need of intelligent, near real-time and adaptive decision-support tools to assist military commanders and their staff under conditions of rapid change and overwhelming data loads. In the light of these developments the Logistics Program Office of ONR considered it timely to provide an annual forum for the interchange of ideas, needs and concepts that would address the decision-support requirements and opportunities in combined Navy and Marine Corps sea-based warfare and humanitarian relief operations. The first ONR Workshop was held April 20-22, 1999 at the Embassy Suites Hotel in San Luis Obispo, California. It focused on advances in technology with particular emphasis on an emerging family of powerful computer-based tools, and concluded that the most able members of this family of tools appear to be computer-based agents that are capable of communicating within a virtual environment of the real world. From 2001 onward the venue of the Workshop moved from the West Coast to Washington, and in 2003 the sponsorship was taken over by ONR’s Littoral Combat/Power Projection (FNC) Program Office (Program Manager: Mr. Barry Blumenthal). Themes and keynote speakers of past Workshops have included: 1999: ‘Collaborative Decision Making Tools’ Vadm Jerry Tuttle (USN Ret.); LtGen Paul Van Riper (USMC Ret.);Radm Leland Kollmorgen (USN Ret.); and, Dr. Gary Klein (KleinAssociates) 2000: ‘The Human-Computer Partnership in Decision-Support’ Dr. Ronald DeMarco (Associate Technical Director, ONR); Radm CharlesMunns; Col Robert Schmidle; and, Col Ray Cole (USMC Ret.) 2001: ‘Continuing the Revolution in Military Affairs’ Mr. Andrew Marshall (Director, Office of Net Assessment, OSD); and,Radm Jay M. Cohen (Chief of Naval Research, ONR) 2002: ‘Transformation ... ’ Vadm Jerry Tuttle (USN Ret.); and, Steve Cooper (CIO, Office ofHomeland Security) 2003: ‘Developing the New Infostructure’ Richard P. Lee (Assistant Deputy Under Secretary, OSD); and, MichaelO’Neil (Boeing) 2004: ‘Interoperability’ MajGen Bradley M. Lott (USMC), Deputy Commanding General, Marine Corps Combat Development Command; Donald Diggs, Director, C2 Policy, OASD (NII

An aesthetics of touch: investigating the language of design relating to form

How well can designers communicate qualities of touch? This paper presents evidence that they have some capability to do so, much of which appears to have been learned, but at present make limited use of such language. Interviews with graduate designer-makers suggest that they are aware of and value the importance of touch and materiality in their work, but lack a vocabulary to fully relate to their detailed explanations of other aspects such as their intent or selection of materials. We believe that more attention should be paid to the verbal dialogue that happens in the design process, particularly as other researchers show that even making-based learning also has a strong verbal element to it. However, verbal language alone does not appear to be adequate for a comprehensive language of touch. Graduate designers-makers’ descriptive practices combined non-verbal manipulation within verbal accounts. We thus argue that haptic vocabularies do not simply describe material qualities, but rather are situated competences that physically demonstrate the presence of haptic qualities. Such competencies are more important than groups of verbal vocabularies in isolation. Design support for developing and extending haptic competences must take this wide range of considerations into account to comprehensively improve designers’ capabilities

Multi-Agent Systems

A multi-agent system (MAS) is a system composed of multiple interacting intelligent agents. Multi-agent systems can be used to solve problems which are difficult or impossible for an individual agent or monolithic system to solve. Agent systems are open and extensible systems that allow for the deployment of autonomous and proactive software components. Multi-agent systems have been brought up and used in several application domains

Knowledge Selection in Category-Based Inductive Reasoning

Current theories of category-based inductive reasoning can be distinguished by the emphasis they place on structured and unstructured knowledge. Theories which draw on unstructured knowledge focus on associative strength, or temporal and spatial contiguity between categories. In contrast, accounts which draw on structured knowledge make reference to the underlying theoretical frameworks which relate categories to one another, such as causal or taxonomic relationships. In this thesis, it is argued that this apparent dichotomy can be resolved if one ascribes different processing characteristics to these two types of knowledge. That is, unstructured knowledge influences inductive reasoning effortlessly and relatively automatically, whereas the use of structured knowledge requires effort and the availability of cognitive resources. Understanding these diverging processes illuminates how background knowledge is selected during the inference process. The thesis demonstrates that structured and unstructured knowledge are dissociable and influence reasoning in line with their unique processing characteristics. Using secondary task and speeded response paradigms, it shows that unstructured knowledge is most influential when people are cognitively burdened or forced to respond fast, whereas they can draw on more elaborate structured knowledge if they are not cognitively compromised. This is especially evident for the causal asymmetry effect, in which people make stronger inferences from cause to effect categories, than vice versa. This Bayesian normative effect disappears when people have to contend with a secondary task or respond under time pressure. The next experiments demonstrate that this dissociation between structured and unstructured knowledge is also evident for a more naturalistic inductive reasoning paradigm in which people generate their own inferences. In the final experiments, it is shown how the selection of appropriate knowledge ties in with more domain-general processes, and especially inhibitory control. When responses based on structured and unstructured knowledge conflict, people’s ability to reason based on appropriate structured knowledge depends upon having relevant background knowledge and on their ability to inhibit the lure from inappropriate unstructured knowledge. The thesis concludes with a discussion of how the concepts of structured and unstructured knowledge illuminate the processes underlying knowledge selection for category-based inductive reasoning. It also looks at the implications the findings have for different theories of category-based induction, and for our understanding of human reasoning processes more generally

Liminal Forms

Liminal Forms is a group exhibition of works by Scott Benesiinaabandan, Jawa El-Khash, Marcus A. Gordon, Qendrim Hoti, and Mariam Magsi. It explores inter-cultural and cross-medium translations in contemporary art to understand aesthetically and materially hybrid manifestations motivated by the simultaneity of different cultures. By engaging with practices that are informed by interdisciplinary methods and actively acknowledging the artists’ Indigenous, third-culture and immigrant identities, I examine the tactics used by artists to communicate issues of origin, place, survival, identity, and agency. The artworks selected contemplate the complexity and ambiguity of contemporary co-existence. They offer a visual and contextual analysis of specific issues related to the following topics: ways of remembering misplaced, erased, and violent histories; forming relationships with culturally and geographically specific issues through the affect potential of inter-disciplinary ar

The Effects of Social Context and Perspective on Language Processing: Evidence from Autism Spectrum Disorder

This thesis aimed to provide new insights into the role of perspective and non-linguistic context in language processing among autistic and typically developing (TD) adults. The mental simulation account and the one-step model state that language is mentally simulated and interpreted in context, suggesting that these processes are activated online while linguistic input is processed. Little is known of whether the same processes are activated in autism. In seven experiments (four were fully pre-registered), I used offline and online measures (e.g. EEG, eye-tracking) to investigate how social factors, such as the perspective, speaker's voice, emotional states of the characters, and topic of conversation influence language comprehension in both lab and real-life settings, in autism and TD adults. Based on the weak central coherence (WCC), and the complex information processing disorder (CIPD) theories, it was expected that autistic adults would struggle to integrate the social context with language, or at least show some subtle delays in the time-course of these anticipation/integration processes. First, I failed to find the same effect as previous findings, showing enhanced processing for personalized language, suggesting that this process is dependent on individual preferences in perspective-taking and task demands. Furthermore, I found that contrary to the WCC, autistic individuals had an intact ability to integrate social context online, while extracting the meaning from language. There were subtle differences in the time-course and strength of these processes between autistic and TD adults under high cognitive load. Findings are in line with CIPD hypothesis, showing that online language processes are disrupted as task demands increase, which consequently affect the quality of their social interactions. Future research should further investigate how these subtle differences impact social communication abilities in everyday life in autism