Practical reasoning with norms for autonomous software agents

Peer reviewedPostprin

Proceedings of The Multi-Agent Logics, Languages, and Organisations Federated Workshops (MALLOW 2010)

http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-627/allproceedings.pdfInternational audienceMALLOW-2010 is a third edition of a series initiated in 2007 in Durham, and pursued in 2009 in Turin. The objective, as initially stated, is to "provide a venue where: the cost of participation was minimum; participants were able to attend various workshops, so fostering collaboration and cross-fertilization; there was a friendly atmosphere and plenty of time for networking, by maximizing the time participants spent together"

A Study of the Adaptive Functioning and the Behavioral and Emotional Problems of Child Victims and Witnesses of Family Violence

Behavior problems and adaptive behavior were evaluated in a sample of 30 children, mean age 9.5 years, whose mothers had been temporarily residing in a shelter or had been receiving shelter services during the 6 1/2 months of data collection. Using a sequential sampling design, the mother of every child exposed to family violence, was selected. Fifteen mothers were interviewed regarding the nature of the violence that their children had witnessed and/or experienced (including type, frequency, duration, and recency of the violence) as well as the nature of their children\u27s adaptive behavior (Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales). Mothers also rated their children\u27s behavior on the Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist and completed a measure of maternal depression (Beck Depression Inventory). The results of the present study indicate a clinically significant prevalence of both behavior problems and diminished adaptive functioning as reported by the mothers. More than one third of the children in our study (36.67%) exhibited behavior problems that fell within the clinical range (T ≥ 65). In addition, 60% of the children\u27s adaptive behavior scores fell into the moderately low to low category (X \u3c 85); and, across the areas of communication, daily living skills, and socialization, the children in our sample were found to be performing an average 2.23 years below the level expected for their chronological age. Pearson product-moment correlations were computed between each of the-assessed dimensions of both maternal and child functioning to delineate the relationship between the child functioning and the child\u27s witnessing or experiencing of parental violence. A significant, negative association between the adaptive behavior composite and externalizing behavior scores was found, revealing that as adaptive behavior diminishes, externalizing behaviors increase. Adaptive behavior, in contrast, was not found to be significantly related to internalizing behaviors; however, maternal depression was significantly related to the internalizing behavior exhibited by the child. Multiple regression analysis revealed that 70% of the variance in internalizing behavior problems exhibited by the child is accounted for by maternal depression (BDI) and adaptive behavior, with maternal depression being the major predictor. Thus, in accordance with theoretical predictions, the impact upon the child of witnessing and/or experiencing family violence may be partially mediated by factors associated with maternal depression. Implications of these findings are discussed

Emergence In the Loop: Simulating the two way dynamics of norm innovation

In this paper we will present the EMIL project, "EMergence In the Loop: Simulating the two-way dynamics of norm innovation", a three-year project funded by the European Commission (Sixth Framework Programme -Information Society and Technologies) in the framework of the initiative "Simulating Emergent Properties in Complex Systems". The EMIL project intends to contribute to the study of social complex systems by modelling norm innovation as a phenomenon implying interrelationships among multiple levels. It shall endeavour to point out that social dynamics in societies of intelligent agents is necessarily bi-directional, which adds complexity to the emergence processes. The micro-macro link will be modelled and observed in the emergence of properties at the macro-level and their immergence into the micro-level units. The main scientific aim of the EMIL project is to construct a simulator for exploring and experimenting norm-innovation

Assessment and diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder in Latino children

There is an increase in the number of children who are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. However, significant racial and ethnic disparities exist in the diagnosis and treatment of the disorder. Based on the literature, Latino children appear to be under diagnosed or misdiagnosed with other psychological disorders rather than autism spectrum disorder. In addition, Latino children are typically diagnosed at a later age than their White peers. There is almost no research devoted to the assessment of autism spectrum disorder with young Latino children and there is insufficient research related to cultural perceptions of symptoms which can influence parental report. There is an increasing need to provide culturally appropriate Spanish language assessment to Latino children and their families. Therefore, this dissertation provides a critical review of those tests that are frequently cited in the literature or available in Spanish for use in the neuropsychological assessment of young Latino children suspected of having autism spectrum disorder within the following domains: Social Communication and Social Interaction; Speech, Language and Communication; Restricted, Repetitive Behaviors, Interests or Activities; Sensory Processing/Sensory Integration and; Developmental and Adaptive Functioning. Tests used to aid in the differential diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder and other emotional and behavioral disorders in Latino children are also included. A few select tools are recommended for use with this population to be used as a resource for those clinicians serving this population

Abductive Design of BDI Agent-based Digital Twins of Organizations

For a Digital Twin - a precise, virtual representation of a physical counterpart - of a human-like system to be faithful and complete, it must appeal to a notion of anthropomorphism (i.e., attributing human behaviour to non-human entities) to imitate (1) the externally visible behaviour and (2) the internal workings of that system. Although the Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) paradigm was not developed for this purpose, it has been used successfully in human modeling applications. In this sense, we introduce in this thesis the notion of abductive design of BDI agent-based Digital Twins of organizations, which builds on two powerful reasoning disciplines: reverse engineering (to recreate the visible behaviour of the target system) and goal-driven eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) (for viewing the behaviour of the target system through the lens of BDI agents). Precisely speaking, the overall problem we are trying to address in this thesis is to “Find a BDI agent program that best explains (in the sense of formal abduction) the behaviour of a target system based on its past experiences . To do so, we propose three goal-driven XAI techniques: (1) abductive design of BDI agents, (2) leveraging imperfect explanations and (3) mining belief-based explanations. The resulting approach suggests that using goal-driven XAI to generate Digital Twins of organizations in the form of BDI agents can be effective, even in a setting with limited information about the target system’s behaviour

Weighted logics for artificial intelligence : an introductory discussion

International audienceBefore presenting the contents of the special issue, we propose a structured introductory overview of a landscape of the weighted logics (in a general sense) that can be found in the Artificial Intelligence literature, highlighting their fundamental differences and their application areas