User Intent Prediction in Information-seeking Conversations

Conversational assistants are being progressively adopted by the general population. However, they are not capable of handling complicated information-seeking tasks that involve multiple turns of information exchange. Due to the limited communication bandwidth in conversational search, it is important for conversational assistants to accurately detect and predict user intent in information-seeking conversations. In this paper, we investigate two aspects of user intent prediction in an information-seeking setting. First, we extract features based on the content, structural, and sentiment characteristics of a given utterance, and use classic machine learning methods to perform user intent prediction. We then conduct an in-depth feature importance analysis to identify key features in this prediction task. We find that structural features contribute most to the prediction performance. Given this finding, we construct neural classifiers to incorporate context information and achieve better performance without feature engineering. Our findings can provide insights into the important factors and effective methods of user intent prediction in information-seeking conversations.Comment: Accepted to CHIIR 201

From sensorimotor dependencies to perceptual practices: making enactivism social

Proponents of enactivism should be interested in exploring what notion of action best captures the type of action-perception link that the view proposes, such that it covers all the aspects in which our doings constitute and are constituted by our perceiving. This article proposes and defends the thesis that the notion of sensorimotor dependencies is insufficient to account for the reality of human perception, and that the central enactive notion should be that of perceptual practices. Sensorimotor enactivism is insufficient because it has no traction on socially dependent perceptions, which are essential to the role and significance of perception in our lives. Since the social dimension is a central desideratum in a theory of human perception, enactivism needs a notion that accounts for such an aspect. This article sketches the main features of the Wittgenstein-inspired notion of perceptual practices as the central notion to understand perception. Perception, I claim, is properly understood as woven into a type of social practices that includes food, dance, dress, music, etc. More specifically, perceptual practices are the enactment of culturally structured, normatively rich techniques of commerce of meaningful multi- and inter-modal perceptible material. I argue that perceptual practices explain three central features of socially dependent perception: attentional focus, aspects’ saliency, and modal-specific harmony-like relations

Cognitive Computation sans Representation

The Computational Theory of Mind (CTM) holds that cognitive processes are essentially computational, and hence computation provides the scientific key to explaining mentality. The Representational Theory of Mind (RTM) holds that representational content is the key feature in distinguishing mental from non-mental systems. I argue that there is a deep incompatibility between these two theoretical frameworks, and that the acceptance of CTM provides strong grounds for rejecting RTM. The focal point of the incompatibility is the fact that representational content is extrinsic to formal procedures as such, and the intended interpretation of syntax makes no difference to the execution of an algorithm. So the unique 'content' postulated by RTM is superfluous to the formal procedures of CTM. And once these procedures are implemented in a physical mechanism, it is exclusively the causal properties of the physical mechanism that are responsible for all aspects of the system's behaviour. So once again, postulated content is rendered superfluous. To the extent that semantic content may appear to play a role in behaviour, it must be syntactically encoded within the system, and just as in a standard computational artefact, so too with the human mind/brain - it's pure syntax all the way down to the level of physical implementation. Hence 'content' is at most a convenient meta-level gloss, projected from the outside by human theorists, which itself can play no role in cognitive processing

Salvage logging changes the taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional successional trajectories of forest bird communities

1.Salvage logging following natural disturbances may alter the natural successional trajectories of biological communities by affecting the occurrences of species, functional groups and evolutionary lineages. However, few studies have examined whether dissimilarities between bird communities of salvaged and unsalvaged forests are more pronounced for rare species, functional groups and evolutionary lineages than for their more common counterparts. 2. We compiled data on breeding bird assemblages from nine study areas in North America, Europe and Asia, covering a 17‐year period following wildfire or windstorm disturbances and subsequent salvage logging. We tested whether dissimilarities based on non‐shared species, functional groups and evolutionary lineages (a) decreased or increased over time and (b) the responses of rare, common and dominant species varied, by using a unified statistical framework based on Hill numbers and null models. 3. We found that dissimilarities between bird communities caused by salvage logging persisted over time for rare, common and dominant species, evolutionary lineages and for rare functional groups. Dissimilarities of common and dominant functional groups increased 14 years post disturbance. 4. Salvage logging led to significantly larger dissimilarities than expected by chance. Functional dissimilarities between salvaged and unsalvaged sites were lower compared to taxonomic and phylogenetic dissimilarities. In general, dissimilarities were highest for rare, followed by common and dominant species. 5. Synthesis and applications. Our research demonstrates that salvage logging did not decrease dissimilarities of bird communities over time and taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic dissimilarities persisted for over a decade. We recommend resource managers and decision makers to reserve portions of disturbed forest to enable unmanaged post‐disturbance succession of bird communities, particularly to conserve rare species found in unsalvaged disturbed forests

Salvage logging changes the taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional successional trajectories of forest bird communities

1. Salvage logging following natural disturbances may alter the natural successional trajectories of biological communities by affecting the occurrences of species, functional groups and evolutionary lineages. However, few studies have examined whether dissimilarities between bird communities of salvaged and unsalvaged forests are more pronounced for rare species, functional groups and evolutionary lineages than for their more common counterparts. 2. We compiled data on breeding bird assemblages from nine study areas in North America, Europe and Asia, covering a 17-year period following wildfire or windstorm disturbances and subsequent salvage logging. We tested whether dissimilarities based on non-shared species, functional groups and evolutionary lineages (a) decreased or increased over time and (b) the responses of rare, common and dominant species varied, by using a unified statistical framework based on Hill numbers and null models. 3. We found that dissimilarities between bird communities caused by salvage logging persisted over time for rare, common and dominant species, evolutionary lineages and for rare functional groups. Dissimilarities of common and dominant functional groups increased 14 years post disturbance. 4. Salvage logging led to significantly larger dissimilarities than expected by chance. Functional dissimilarities between salvaged and unsalvaged sites were lower compared to taxonomic and phylogenetic dissimilarities. In general, dissimilarities were highest for rare, followed by common and dominant species. 5. Synthesis and applications. Our research demonstrates that salvage logging did not decrease dissimilarities of bird communities over time and taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic dissimilarities persisted for over a decade. We recommend resource managers and decision makers to reserve portions of disturbed forest to enable unmanaged post-disturbance succession of bird communities, particularly to conserve rare species found in unsalvaged disturbed forests.Ministry of Science and Technology; Gregor Louisoder Environmental Foundatio

Climatic patterns in the establishment of wintering areas by North American migratory birds

Long-distance migration in birds is relatively well studied in nature; however, one aspect of this phenomenon that remains poorly understood is the pattern of distribution presented by species during arrival to and establishment of wintering areas. Some studies suggest that the selection of areas in winter is somehow determined by climate, given its influence on both the distribution of bird species and their resources. We analyzed whether different migrant passerine species of North America present climatic preferences during arrival to and departure from their wintering areas. We used ecological niche modeling to generate monthly potential climatic distributions for 13 migratory bird species during the winter season by combining the locations recorded per month with four environmental layers. We calculated monthly coefficients of climate variation and then compared two GLM (generalized linear models), evaluated with the AIC (Akaike information criterion), to describe how these coefficients varied over the course of the season, as a measure of the patterns of establishment in the wintering areas. For 11 species, the sites show nonlinear patterns of variation in climatic preferences, with low coefficients of variation at the beginning and end of the season and higher values found in the intermediate months. The remaining two species analyzed showed a different climatic pattern of selective establishment of wintering areas, probably due to taxonomic discrepancy, which would affect their modeled winter distribution. Patterns of establishment of wintering areas in the species showed a climatic preference at the macroscale, suggesting that individuals of several species actively select wintering areas that meet specific climatic conditions. This probably gives them an advantage over the winter and during the return to breeding areas. As these areas become full of migrants, alternative suboptimal sites are occupied. Nonrandom winter area selection may also have consequences for the conservation of migratory bird species, particularly under a scenario of climate change

Empathy, engagement, entrainment: the interaction dynamics of aesthetic experience

A recent version of the view that aesthetic experience is based in empathy as inner imitation explains aesthetic experience as the automatic simulation of actions, emotions, and bodily sensations depicted in an artwork by motor neurons in the brain. Criticizing the simulation theory for committing to an erroneous concept of empathy and failing to distinguish regular from aesthetic experiences of art, I advance an alternative, dynamic approach and claim that aesthetic experience is enacted and skillful, based in the recognition of others’ experiences as distinct from one’s own. In combining insights from mainly psychology, phenomenology, and cognitive science, the dynamic approach aims to explain the emergence of aesthetic experience in terms of the reciprocal interaction between viewer and artwork. I argue that aesthetic experience emerges by participatory sense-making and revolves around movement as a means for creating meaning. While entrainment merely plays a preparatory part in this, aesthetic engagement constitutes the phenomenological side of coupling to an artwork and provides the context for exploration, and eventually for moving, seeing, and feeling with art. I submit that aesthetic experience emerges from bodily and emotional engagement with works of art via the complementary processes of the perception–action and motion–emotion loops. The former involves the embodied visual exploration of an artwork in physical space, and progressively structures and organizes visual experience by way of perceptual feedback from body movements made in response to the artwork. The latter concerns the movement qualities and shapes of implicit and explicit bodily responses to an artwork that cue emotion and thereby modulate over-all affect and attitude. The two processes cause the viewer to bodily and emotionally move with and be moved by individual works of art, and consequently to recognize another psychological orientation than her own, which explains how art can cause feelings of insight or awe and disclose aspects of life that are unfamiliar or novel to the viewer

SentiBench - a benchmark comparison of state-of-the-practice sentiment analysis methods

In the last few years thousands of scientific papers have investigated sentiment analysis, several startups that measure opinions on real data have emerged and a number of innovative products related to this theme have been developed. There are multiple methods for measuring sentiments, including lexical-based and supervised machine learning methods. Despite the vast interest on the theme and wide popularity of some methods, it is unclear which one is better for identifying the polarity (i.e., positive or negative) of a message. Accordingly, there is a strong need to conduct a thorough apple-to-apple comparison of sentiment analysis methods, \textit{as they are used in practice}, across multiple datasets originated from different data sources. Such a comparison is key for understanding the potential limitations, advantages, and disadvantages of popular methods. This article aims at filling this gap by presenting a benchmark comparison of twenty-four popular sentiment analysis methods (which we call the state-of-the-practice methods). Our evaluation is based on a benchmark of eighteen labeled datasets, covering messages posted on social networks, movie and product reviews, as well as opinions and comments in news articles. Our results highlight the extent to which the prediction performance of these methods varies considerably across datasets. Aiming at boosting the development of this research area, we open the methods' codes and datasets used in this article, deploying them in a benchmark system, which provides an open API for accessing and comparing sentence-level sentiment analysis methods

Moving Stories: Agency, Emotion and Practical Rationality

What is it to be an agent? One influential line of thought, endorsed by G. E. M. Anscombe and David Velleman, among others, holds that agency depends on practical rationality—the ability to act for reasons, rather than being merely moved by causes. Over the past 25 years, Velleman has argued compellingly for a distinctive view of agency and the practical rationality with which he associates it. On Velleman’s conception, being an agent consists in having the capacity to be motivated by a drive to act for reasons. Your bodily movements qualify as genuine actions insofar as they are motivated in part by your desire to behave in a way that makes sense to yourself. However, there are at least two distinct ways of spelling out what this drive towards self-intelligibility consists in, both present in Velleman’s work. It might consist in a drive towards intelligibility in causal-psychological terms: roughly, a drive to maximize the rational coherence of your psychological states. Alternatively, it might consist in a drive towards narrative intelligibility: a drive to make your ongoing activity conform to a recognizable narrative structure, where that structure is understood emotionally. Velleman originally saw these options as basically equivalent, but later came to prioritize the drive towards causal-psychological intelligibility over that towards narrative intelligibility. I argue that this gets things the wrong way round—we should instead understand our capacities to render ourselves intelligible in causal-psychological terms as built upon a bedrock of emotionally suffused narrative understanding. In doing so, we resolve several problems for Velleman’s view, and pave the way for an embodied, embedded and affective account of practical rationality and agency. According to the picture that emerges, practical rationality is essential to agency, narrative understanding is essential to practical rationality, and the rhythms and structures patterning the ebb and flow of our emotional lives are essential to narrative understanding