Symbol Emergence in Robotics: A Survey

Humans can learn the use of language through physical interaction with their environment and semiotic communication with other people. It is very important to obtain a computational understanding of how humans can form a symbol system and obtain semiotic skills through their autonomous mental development. Recently, many studies have been conducted on the construction of robotic systems and machine-learning methods that can learn the use of language through embodied multimodal interaction with their environment and other systems. Understanding human social interactions and developing a robot that can smoothly communicate with human users in the long term, requires an understanding of the dynamics of symbol systems and is crucially important. The embodied cognition and social interaction of participants gradually change a symbol system in a constructive manner. In this paper, we introduce a field of research called symbol emergence in robotics (SER). SER is a constructive approach towards an emergent symbol system. The emergent symbol system is socially self-organized through both semiotic communications and physical interactions with autonomous cognitive developmental agents, i.e., humans and developmental robots. Specifically, we describe some state-of-art research topics concerning SER, e.g., multimodal categorization, word discovery, and a double articulation analysis, that enable a robot to obtain words and their embodied meanings from raw sensory--motor information, including visual information, haptic information, auditory information, and acoustic speech signals, in a totally unsupervised manner. Finally, we suggest future directions of research in SER.Comment: submitted to Advanced Robotic

Civic Identities, Online Technologies: From Designing Civics Curriculum to Supporting Civic Experiences

Part of the Volume on Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth.Youth today are often criticized for their lack of civic participation and involvement in political life. Technology has been blamed, amongst many other causes, for fostering social isolation and youth's retreat into a private world disconnected from their communities. However, current research is beginning to indicate that these might be inaccurate perceptions. The Internet has provided new opportunities to create communities that extend beyond geographic boundaries, to engage in civic and volunteering activities across local and national frontiers, to learn about political life, and to experience the challenges of democratic participation. How do we leverage youth's interest in new technologies by developing technology-based educational programs to promote civic engagement? This chapter explores this question by proposing socio-technical design elements to be considered when developing technology-rich experiences. It presents a typology to guide the design of Internet-based interventions, taking into account both the affordances of the technology and the educational approach to the use of the technology. It also presents a pilot experience in a northeastern university that offered a pre-orientation program in which incoming freshman designed a three-dimensional virtual campus of the future and developed new policies and programs to strengthen the relationship between college campus and neighbor communities

Bridging the Gap: 21st Century Media Meets Theoretical Pedagogical Literacy Practices

In this chapter, the researchers used an ethnographic stance to demonstrate how conversation evolved within a social media platform. They investigated the online discussions and face-to-face dialogues between teacher educators and pre-service teachers. They compared the participants’ reciprocal conversations within this case study to analyze patterns in the language used in each forum in order to identify the affordances and constraints of perceived understanding. Through this discourse analysis the authors sought to identify indicators of each participant’s metacognitive development while engaging in an online book discussion through a social media platform. Data analysis indicated that there was metacognitive growth when comparing the initial reciprocal conversations with the final conversations

Regional Languages on Wikipedia. Venetian Wikipedia’s user interaction over time

Given that little is known about regional language user interaction practices on Wikipedia, this study analyzed content creation process, user social interaction and exchanged content over the course of the existence of Venetian Wikipedia. Content of and user interactions over time on Venetian Wikipedia exhibit practices shared within larger Wikipedia communities and display behaviors that are pertinent to this specific community. Shared practices with\ud other Wikipedias (eg. English Wikipedia) included coordination content as a dominant category of exchanged content, user-role based structure where and most active communicators are administrators was another shared feature, as well as socialization tactics to involve users in online projects. While Venetian Wikipedia stood out for its geographically-linked users who emphasized their regional identity. User exchanges over time spilled over from online to offline domains. This analysis provides a different side of Wikipedia collaboration which is based on creation, maintenance, and negotiation of the content but also shows\ud engagement into interpersonal communication. Thus, this study exemplifies how regional language Wikipedias provide ways to their users not only to preserve their cultural heritage through the language use on regional language Wikipedia space and connect through shared contents of interest, but also, how it could serve as a community maintenance platform that unifies users with shared goals and extends communication to offline realm

Ideation as an intellectual information acquisition and use context: Investigating game designers’ information-based ideation behavior

Human Information Behavior (HIB) research commonly examines behavior in the context of why information is acquired and how it will be used, but usually at the level of the work or everyday-life tasks the information will support. HIB has not been examined in detail at the broader contextual level of intellectual purpose (i.e. the higher-order conceptual tasks the information was acquired to support). Examination at this level can enhance holistic understanding of HIB as a ‘means to an intellectual end’ and inform the design of digital information environments that support information interaction for specific intellectual purposes. We investigate information-based ideation (IBI) as a specific intellectual information acquisition and use context by conducting Critical Incident-style interviews with ten game designers, focusing on how they interact with information to generate and develop creative design ideas. Our findings give rise to a framework of their ideation-focused HIB, which systems designers can leverage to reason about how best to support certain behaviors to drive design ideation. These findings emphasize the importance of intellectual purpose as a driver for acquisition and desired outcome of use

Considering Evaluation: Thoughts for Social Change and Movement-Building Groups

The aim of this guide is to present an easy-to-use resource for evaluation and assessments of social justice, social change and movement building work. It is not meant to be a comprehensive guide to evaluation, but rather goal is to share some of our tools, resources, and lessons learned in this area. This booklet is intended for practitioners working to build organizations, organize networks, alliances and movement building projects

Service Learning Enhances Conceptual Learning in a RN to BSN Program

A qualitative study using transcript analysis was conducted to examine the effectiveness of service learning in enhancing conceptual learning in RN to BSN students. As part of their capstone course in an online program, students engaged in 64 hours of service learning in their local community. The transcripts of asynchronous discussions and journal entries formed the data for analysis. The findings illustrated that the student’s conceptual understanding was enhanced from the service learning experience. Further, the students demonstrated higher-level thinking by linking concepts that could be applied to nursing practice. Service learning reinforced the community-based philosophy of the School of Nursing, and strengthened their abilities in leadership, teamwork, and collaboration with a greater orientation to community, vulnerable populations, and health promotion. Service learning was found to be an effective way to use the skills of the registered nurse for health related service in the community while also meeting their academic and individual learning needs

Narrative, Sensemaking, and Improvisation in Participatory Hypermedia Construction

In this paper we describe research into a form of practitioner sensemaking in the context of participatory hypermedia construction sessions, in which groups of people build knowledge maps. We discuss how constructs from narrative theory and improvisation have helped us understand what happens at the moments when practitioners encounter dilemmas and obstacles. We provide brief examples from case studies and discuss possible contributions to broader themes in sensemaking research

Setting and motivation in the decision to participate: An approach to the engagement of diverse samples in mobile research.

Internet and mobile based research are powerful tools in the creation of large, cohort studies (eCohort). However, recent analysis indicates that an underrepresentation of minority and low income groups in these studies might exceed that found in traditional research [1-5]. In this report, we present findings from an experiment in research engagement using the Eureka Research Platform developed to enroll diverse populations in support of biomedical clinical research. This experiment involved the recruitment of African American and Latino participants in a smartphone based survey at a temporary, charitable, dental event sponsored, in part, by the research team, in order to explore the impact of setting and approach on recruitment outcomes. 211 participants enrolled including a significant representation of African Americans (51%) and Latinos (31%) and those with education levels at high school or less (37%). Interviews conducted after the study confirmed that our recruitment efforts within the context of a service event affected the decision to participate. While further research is necessary, this experiment holds promise for the engagement of underrepresented groups in research