21,124 research outputs found
Language: The missing selection pressure
Human beings are talkative. What advantage did their ancestors find in
communicating so much? Numerous authors consider this advantage to be "obvious"
and "enormous". If so, the problem of the evolutionary emergence of language
amounts to explaining why none of the other primate species evolved anything
even remotely similar to language. What I propose here is to reverse the
picture. On closer examination, language resembles a losing strategy. Competing
for providing other individuals with information, sometimes striving to be
heard, makes apparently no sense within a Darwinian framework. At face value,
language as we can observe it should never have existed or should have been
counter-selected. In other words, the selection pressure that led to language
is still missing. The solution I propose consists in regarding language as a
social signaling device that developed in a context of generalized insecurity
that is unique to our species. By talking, individuals advertise their
alertness and their ability to get informed. This hypothesis is shown to be
compatible with many characteristics of language that otherwise are left
unexplained.Comment: 34 pages, 3 figure
Experimenting with the Gaze of a Conversational Agent
We have carried out a pilot experiment to investigate the effects of different eye gaze behaviors of a cartoon-like talking face on the quality of human-agent dialogues. We compared a version of the talking face that roughly implements some patterns of humanlike behavior with two other versions. We called this the optimal version. In one of the other versions the shifts in gaze were kept minimal and in the other version the shifts would occur randomly. The talking face has a number of restrictions. There is no speech recognition, so questions and replies have to\ud
be typed in by the users of the systems. Despite this restriction we found that participants that conversed with the optimal agent appreciated the agent more than participants that conversed with the other agents. Conversations with the optimal version proceeded more efficiently. Participants needed less time to complete their task
Controlling the Gaze of Conversational Agents
We report on a pilot experiment that investigated the effects of different eye gaze behaviours of a cartoon-like talking face on the quality of human-agent dialogues. We compared a version of the talking face that roughly implements some patterns of human-like behaviour with\ud
two other versions. In one of the other versions the shifts in gaze were kept minimal and in the other version the shifts would occur randomly. The talking face has a number of restrictions. There is no speech recognition, so questions and replies have to be typed in by the users\ud
of the systems. Despite this restriction we found that participants that conversed with the agent that behaved according to the human-like patterns appreciated the agent better than participants that conversed with the other agents. Conversations with the optimal version also\ud
proceeded more efficiently. Participants needed less time to complete their task
Cognitive network structure: an experimental study
In this paper we present first experimental results about a small group of
people exchanging private and public messages in a virtual community. Our goal
is the study of the cognitive network that emerges during a chat seance. We
used the Derrida coefficient and the triangle structure under the working
assumption that moods and perceived mutual affinity can produce results
complementary to a full semantic analysis. The most outstanding outcome is the
difference between the network obtained considering publicly exchanged messages
and the one considering only privately exchanged messages: in the former case,
the network is very homogeneous, in the sense that each individual interacts in
the same way with all the participants, whilst in the latter the interactions
among different agents are very heterogeneous, and are based on "the enemy of
my enemy is my friend" strategy. Finally a recent characterization of the
triangular cliques has been considered in order to describe the intimate
structure of the network. Experimental results confirm recent theoretical
studies indicating that certain 3-vertex structures can be used as indicators
for the network aging and some relevant dynamical features.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, 3 table
Феномен міжкультурної комунікативної компетентності викладача вищої школи як ознака професійно-педагогічної якості (Cross-cultural communicative competence phenomenon as a special feature of a higher school lecturer’s professional and pedagogic quality)
У статті розглянуто властивості міжкультурної комунікативної компетентності у контексті культуроло-
гічного, комунікативного, компетентнісного підходів з метою гуманітарної оцінки професійно-педагогічної якості
викладача вищої школи, що є однією із складових педагогічних умов підвищення мотивації студентів до вивчення іноземної мови.
(The article reveals characteristics of a cross-cultural communicative competence in the context of culturological, communicative competence of approach for the humanist assessment of a professional pedagogic merit of higher school lecturers that is vital to increasing in students’ motivation to study foreign languages. The authors emphasize the role of a university
teacher both as a skilled professional and a transferor, who absorbs and sees the essence of professional norms, having become a pro, and translates cultural norms of a certain professional field and transforms them through the function of culture creation realization and ensures professional activity.
Computational and Robotic Models of Early Language Development: A Review
We review computational and robotics models of early language learning and
development. We first explain why and how these models are used to understand
better how children learn language. We argue that they provide concrete
theories of language learning as a complex dynamic system, complementing
traditional methods in psychology and linguistics. We review different modeling
formalisms, grounded in techniques from machine learning and artificial
intelligence such as Bayesian and neural network approaches. We then discuss
their role in understanding several key mechanisms of language development:
cross-situational statistical learning, embodiment, situated social
interaction, intrinsically motivated learning, and cultural evolution. We
conclude by discussing future challenges for research, including modeling of
large-scale empirical data about language acquisition in real-world
environments.
Keywords: Early language learning, Computational and robotic models, machine
learning, development, embodiment, social interaction, intrinsic motivation,
self-organization, dynamical systems, complexity.Comment: to appear in International Handbook on Language Development, ed. J.
Horst and J. von Koss Torkildsen, Routledg
Theories of the development of human communication
This article considers evidence for innate motives for sharing rituals and symbols from animal semiotics, developmental neurobiology, physiology of prospective motor control, affective neuroscience and infant communication. Mastery of speech and language depends on polyrhythmic movements in narrative activities of many forms. Infants display intentional activity with feeling and sensitivity for the contingent reactions of other persons. Talk shares many of its generative powers with music and the other ‘imitative arts’. Its special adaptations concern the capacity to produce and learn an endless range of sounds to label discrete learned understandings, topics and projects of intended movement
- …