Comprehending narrative: the cognitive dimension

Readers of narratives construct complex mental models or "spaces" within which to locate themselves. During this process, readers construct, activate, and adjust a spatio-temporal focus to integrate interpretation of individual sentences in a global interpretation. This focus, the ‘deictic center’, shifts constantly. Although linguistic markings help orient the readers, they must draw not only on complex inferential skill but also schematic socio-cultural knowledge. This can create difficulties for readers from other linguistic and cultural environments. Examples from several narratives and a poem are examined, and the cognitive skills required are considered. In each, a base reality “of this time, of that place’ is established, and readers are moved from that mental space to spaces representing other times and places, real and hypothetical, which may include counterparts of events and participants already encountered. The notion of ‘sameness’ is thus a complex one, since it links counterparts across different kinds of spaces. In our examples, each author uses sometimes subtle linguistic markers pointing to sociocultural schemata assumed familiar to the assumed readership. Readers from other social and cultural contexts must surmount the differences in order to construct a plausible cognitive model of the narrative

COMPREHENDING NARRATIVE: THE COGNITIVE DIMENSION

AbstractReaders of narratives construct complex mental models or ‘spaces’ within which to locate themselves. During this process, readers construct, activate, and adjust a spatio-temporal focus to integrate interpretation of individual sentences in a global interpretation. This focus, the ‘deictic center’, shifts constantly. Although linguistic markings help orient the readers, they must draw not only on complex inferential skill but also schematic socio-cultural knowledge. This can create difficulties for readers from other linguistic and cultural environments. Examples from several narratives and a poem are examined, and the cognitive skills required are considered. In each, a base reality “of this time, of that place’ is established, and readers are moved from that mental space to spaces representing other times and places, real and hypothetical, which may include counterparts of events and participants already encountered. The notion of ‘sameness’ is thus a complex one, since it links counterparts across different kinds of spaces. In our examples, each author uses sometimes subtle linguistic markers pointing to sociocultural schemata assumed familiar to the assumed readership. Readers from other social and cultural contexts must surmount the differences in order to construct a plausible cognitive model of the narrative

Promptness and Bounded Fairness in Concurrent and Parameterized Systems

We investigate the satisfaction of specifications in Prompt Linear Temporal Logic (Prompt-LTL) by concurrent systems. Prompt-LTL is an extension of LTL that allows to specify parametric bounds onthe satisfaction of eventualities, thus adding a quantitative aspect to the specification language. We establish a connection between bounded fairness, bounded stutter equivalence, and the satisfaction of Prompt-LTL\X formulas. Based on this connection, we prove the first cutoff results for different classes of systems with a parametric number of components and quantitative specifications, thereby identifying previously unknown decidable fragments of the parameterized model checking problem

Evolution of Male-Killer Suppression in a Natural Population

Male-killing bacteria are widespread in arthropods, and can profoundly alter the reproductive biology of their host species. Here we detail the first case of complete suppression of a male killer. The nymphalid butterfly Hypolimnas bolina is infected with a strain of the bacterium Wolbachia, wBol1, which kills male host embryos in Polynesian populations, but does not do so in many areas of Southeast Asia, where both males and female adults are naturally infected, and wBol1-infected females produce a 1:1 sex ratio. We demonstrate that absence of male killing by wBol1 is associated with dominant zygotic suppression of the action of the male killer. Simulations demonstrate host suppressors of male-killer action can spread very rapidly, and historical data indicating the presence of male killing in Southeast Asia in the very recent past suggests suppressor spread has been a very recent occurrence. Thus, male killer/host interactions are much more dynamic than previously recognised, with rapid and dramatic loss of the phenotype. Our results also indicate that suppression can render male killers completely quiescent, leading to the conclusion that some species that do not currently express a male killer may have done so in the past, and thus that more species have had their biology affected by these parasites than previously believed

The Second Reactive Synthesis Competition (SYNTCOMP 2015)

We report on the design and results of the second reactive synthesis competition (SYNTCOMP 2015). We describe our extended benchmark library, with 6 completely new sets of benchmarks, and additional challenging instances for 4 of the benchmark sets that were already used in SYNTCOMP 2014. To enhance the analysis of experimental results, we introduce an extension of our benchmark format with meta-information, including a difficulty rating and a reference size for solutions. Tools are evaluated on a set of 250 benchmarks, selected to provide a good coverage of benchmarks from all classes and difficulties. We report on changes of the evaluation scheme and the experimental setup. Finally, we describe the entrants into SYNTCOMP 2015, as well as the results of our experimental evaluation. In our analysis, we emphasize progress over the tools that participated last year.Comment: In Proceedings SYNT 2015, arXiv:1602.0078

The 4th Reactive Synthesis Competition (SYNTCOMP 2017): Benchmarks, Participants & Results

We report on the fourth reactive synthesis competition (SYNTCOMP 2017). We introduce two new benchmark classes that have been added to the SYNTCOMP library, and briefly describe the benchmark selection, evaluation scheme and the experimental setup of SYNTCOMP 2017. We present the participants of SYNTCOMP 2017, with a focus on changes with respect to the previous years and on the two completely new tools that have entered the competition. Finally, we present and analyze the results of our experimental evaluation, including a ranking of tools with respect to quantity and quality of solutions.Comment: In Proceedings SYNT 2017, arXiv:1711.10224. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1609.0050

IEEE P7001: A proposed standard on transparency

This paper describes IEEE P7001, a new draft standard on transparency of autonomous systems. In the paper, we outline the development and structure of the draft standard. We present the rationale for transparency as a measurable, testable property. We outline five stakeholder groups: users, the general public and bystanders, safety certification agencies, incident/accident investigators and lawyers/expert witnesses, and explain the thinking behind the normative definitions of “levels” of transparency for each stakeholder group in P7001. The paper illustrates the application of P7001 through worked examples of both specification and assessment of fictional autonomous systems

The 3rd Reactive Synthesis Competition (SYNTCOMP 2016): Benchmarks, Participants & Results

We report on the benchmarks, participants and results of the third reactive synthesis competition(SYNTCOMP 2016). The benchmark library of SYNTCOMP 2016 has been extended to benchmarks in the new LTL-based temporal logic synthesis format (TLSF), and 2 new sets of benchmarks for the existing AIGER-based format for safety specifications. The participants of SYNTCOMP 2016 can be separated according to these two classes of specifications, and we give an overview of the 6 tools that entered the competition in the AIGER-based track, and the 3 participants that entered the TLSF-based track. We briefly describe the benchmark selection, evaluation scheme and the experimental setup of SYNTCOMP 2016. Finally, we present and analyze the results of our experimental evaluation, including a comparison to participants of previous competitions and a legacy tool.Comment: In Proceedings SYNT 2016, arXiv:1611.0717