Yuko Munakata (Added 25 Nov 2007)
Title: Developing cognitive flexibility:  Learning mechanisms
    and representational change
Abstract:
    Children show striking developments in cognitive flexibility,
    becoming increasingly able to overcome habits to respond
    appropriately to the changing environment.  What drives these
    changes?  This talk explores the roles of increasingly active
    and abstract representations, and of error-driven and
    self-organizing learning mechanisms.  We test behavioral
    predictions from neural network models regarding effects of
    language, practice, and feedback on children's cognitive
    flexibility.
    (For more information see the publications list.)

Kevin  O'Regan (Added 15 Nov 2007)
Title: CoSy Speaker: How to build phenomenal consciousness into a robot
For more information, please see Kevin's Web page
And
   Sensorimotor Approach to Phenomenal Consciousness. (ASSC10 Tutorial)
   A simple introduction to the sensorimotor approach to understanding
       the quality of sensory experience, with some change blindness
       demos and nice pictures.

Robert Vickerstaff (Added 7 Nov 2007)
Title: Modeling navigation in desert ants and vision in jumping spiders
Abstract:
    I will talk about two invertebrate species displaying a surprisingly
    rich set of behaviours for their small size, and my attempts to
    produce dynamical system models to mimic and explain these
    abilities. Path integration in Saharan desert ants allows
    surprisingly accurate homing in a largely featureless environment. I
    will present a neural network-based model showing a simple way to
    reproduce many features of the ant's behaviour. Jumping spiders
    of the genus Portia have an unusual visual system giving them very
    high visual acuity in a very small field of view. I will introduce
    work aimed at understanding how they use their vision as part of
    their rich and varied hunting behaviour.

Henrik Christensen (Added 29 Oct 2007)
Title: Cosy Speaker: Challenges in artificial cognitive systems
Abstract:
    Artificial Cognitive Systems is the study of embodied systems that
    can perceive, represent, acquire and reason about their own and
    others activities in the world to enable goal achievement. The
    design of systems that are truly cognitive would be a major
    departure from how IT systems are designed, implemented and utilized
    today. At the heart of this problem are system organization and
    representations that facilitate communication, generalization,
    learning, reasoning and fusion. At the same time to be meaningful
    these systems must be embedded in the real world and as such
    be faced with the richness and diversity of the external
    environment. To study such systems there is a need for a
    multi-disciplinary approach that allows holistic consideration of
    all the aspects across systems theory, AI, perception, statistical
    models, language theory and formal methods. In this presentation
    a number of general challenges for cognitive systems are outlined
    and the approach adopted to these problems in CoSy is also
    discussed.

Kim Plunkett (Added 20 Oct 2007)
Title: Connectionist approaches to language acquisition
Abstract:
    How is lexical structure based on the underlying speech and visual
    categorisation infants have already acquired during the first year
    of life? We use a neural network model to demonstrate that good
    categorisation of auditory and visual stimuli in self-organising
    maps, leads to extension of a label to other objects within the same
    category, even after a single presentation of a word-object pair. We
    show that the ability to generalise labels to objects of like kinds,
    commonly referred to as the taxonomic assumption, is an emergent
    property of the model. Finally, we examine the role of constraints
    imposed on the Hebbian associations in the pairing of objects and
    labels and show how generalisation can be prevented.

Neil Berthier (Added 19 Oct 2007)
Title: Development of reaching in infants
Abstract:
    The development of human infant reaching will be discussed from a
    computational viewpoint.  Significant challenges to the infant will
    be discussed as well as aspects of the task that allow for infants
    to use simple algorithms to learn to reach effectively.

Cecilia Heyes (Added 18 Oct 2007)
Title: Imitation from sensorimotor learning
Abstract:
    Imitation constitutes a special class of reactions to recalled or
    incoming stimulation, in which the action responses match or
    correspond with the action stimuli.  However, even in cases where
    the 'correspondence problem' is most acute (e.g. when a system
    imitates a facial expression or a whole body movement), imitation
    may not require any special types of computation or innate
    knowledge.   The associative sequence learning (ASL) hypothesis
    suggests that the development of imitation (and the mirror system)
    depends on task- and species-general processes of associative,
    sensorimotor learning.  I shall discuss evidence in support of this
    view from behavioural and neurophysiological studies of imitation in
    adult humans.

Thomas Collett (Added 16 Oct 2007)
Title: Insect-level intelligence as displayed in arthropod spatial behaviour
Abstract:
    I will explore this topic,  concentrating on learning and memory,
    using examples from the navigational behaviour of social insects and
    crabs. Navigational behaviour is particularly informative, because
    the animals' rich motor output gives many hints about likely
    mechanisms underlying the behaviour.

Annette Karmiloff-Smith (Added 16 Oct 2007)
Title: Built-in modules vs a developmental process of
    gradual modularisation: Insights from genetic disorders
Abstract:
    In this talk, I will argue that data from typically developing
    infants demonstrate how human brains become progressively
    specialised and localised for specific cognitive functions over
    developmental time, rather than starting out that way. Moreover,
    rather than pointing to genetically specified cognitive-level
    modules as some would claim, data from developmental disorders
    illustrate how despite proficient behaviour on some tasks, cognitive
    and brain processes are atypical involving a lack of progressive
    specialisation and localisation of function. In general, I will
    stress the importance of building full developmental trajectories of
    cognitive functions from the earliest basic-level cross-domain
    processes in infancy through childhood to the emergent higher-level
    domain-specific cognitive processes in the adult endstate.

Randall O'Reilly (Added 5 Oct 2007)
Title:
    Abstract representations and embodied agents: prefrontal cortex
    and basal ganglia contributions
Abstract:
    Using biologically-based computational models of the prefrontal
    cortex and basal ganglia (together with posterior cortical
    areas), my colleagues and I have developed new insights into the
    development of abstract, rule-like representations, which are
    critical for higher level cognitive functions.  We are currently
    applying these models to simulated robotic agents equipped with
    realistic sensory-motor systems, to understand how cognitive
    control might emerge in embodied agents engaged in
    developmentally-realistic tasks (e.g., playing with blocks,
    sorting by colors, etc).  We are also exploring how a wide range
    of standard cognitive control/executive function tasks can be
    performed in a single system, by building upon more basic
    primitive skills that develop in naturalistic environments.

Laurie Santos (Added 4 Oct 2007)
Title: Primate understanding of objects and motion
Abstract:
    My talk will discuss how primates represent other objects and,
    in particular, if there is evidence that other primates can
    represent unobserved aspects of their physical and social world.
    I'll discuss recent work on monkey social cognition and some
    new work exploring whether monkeys share a human essentialist
    bias.

Guenther Knoblich (Added 4 Oct 2007)
Title: Two Challenges for Robotics: Mirroring and Joint Action
Abstract:
    Recent research on the links between perception, action, and
    cognition has led to a new understanding of how people perceive
    each other and how they cooperate with one another. In a
    nutshell, people use their own action capabilities, emotions,
    and sensations to perceive, predict, and understand others and
    to perform joint actions with them. Of course, this development
    has potentially important implications for robotics because it
    opens up a road for constructing robot societies where robots
    learn from each other or perform actions together. However, the
    recent progress in psychology and the cognitive neurosciences
    has also resulted in a renewed focus on intentionality,
    experience, and social relations. It is far from clear how these
    capabilities could be technically implemented in robots. In my
    talk I will provide an overview of important findings and
    discuss which aspects of these findings may be realistically
    transferable from humans to robots.

Aaron Sloman (Added 3 Oct 2007)
Title:
    Cosy Speaker: Understanding causation in robots, animals and children:
    Hume's way and Kant's way.
Abstract:
    For Hume, causation was just a matter of correlation, and current
    Bayesian theories of causation fit that general idea, adding
    conditional probabilities. For Kant, causation implied a kind of
    necessity, analogous to the necessity in mathematical reasoning.
    There have been disputes as to who was right, whereas I'll argue
    that both notions of causation are needed and are used by
    intelligent systems. Roughly Humean causation is all you have when
    you merely have strong evidence regarding what causes what, whereas
    in some cases you know *why* something causes something, e.g. why
    going round a house in one direction produces one series of
    experiences and going round in the opposite direction produces
    another, and why when two centrally pivoted gear wheels made of
    rigid impenetrable material are meshed if one turns clockwise
    clockwise the other *must* turn counter-clockwise. The history of
    science is full of cases where Humean causation is replaced by
    Kantian causation as a result of deeper understanding. Kantian
    causal understanding, when available, is more powerful, e.g. because
    it can be used to deal with novel situations. Currently no robots
    that I know of have any Kantian understanding, and this is a very
    serious deficiency. Human children acquire Kantian understanding in
    a piecemeal and idiosyncratic way. It is not clear whether any other
    animals have this ability, but there is prima-facie evidence that
    some do. I shall base my presentation on a subset of the topics
    presented by Jackie Chappell and myself at a recent workshop on
    natural and artificial cognition.
    Our slides are available here:
    http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/talks/wonac/
Added later:
    Backround notes on model-based semantics and symbol tethering

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 Karen E. Adolph
    Developing flexibility
    Behavioral flexibility is the essence of goal-directed action.
    This presentation focuses on three aspects of flexibility:
    perceiving changing possibilities for action under variable and
    novel conditions, modifying ongoing movements to suit the
    current constraints on action, and finding new means to achieve
    a desired outcome. Flexibility will be described across the
    life-span, from infants to elderly, as participants cope with
    various challenges to reaching, balance, and locomotion.

    A paper reporting this work is available online:
    http://www.psych.nyu.edu/adolph/PDFs/MinnSymp2005.pdf

        Learning to Learn in the Development of Action. In
        Action As An Organizer of Learning and Development: Volume 33 in
        Volume 33 in the Minnesota Symposium on Child Psychology
        Series 2005
        Edited by John J. Rieser, Jeffrey J. Lockman, Charles A. Nelson

 Luciano Fadiga
    From Hand Actions to Language: Anatomo-Physiological Links between
    Monkey Mirror Neurons and Human Broca's Area
    The classical serial flow-diagram describing how sensory
    information is processed and eventually transformed into
    movements by the brain has becoming more and more implausible
    because of neuroanatomical and neurophysiological evidence. In
    the first part of my presentation I will discuss how this
    association between stimulus and response, manifesting itself at
    single neuron level, might provide the goal to the movements.
    Thus, movements are transformed into actions and, perhaps more
    interestingly, may give origin to action representations,
    playing a crucial role in understanding the other individuals
    and the environment around us. In the second part of my
    presentation, I will discuss the possible link between action
    representation, action understanding and interindividual
    communication, in the peculiar framework of human language.
    See the papers here:
    http://web.unife.it/progetti/neurolab/publications.htm

 Thomas Shipley
    Event segmentation and action recognition
    My talk will review recent research on how humans decompose and
    recognize events. We are beginning to understand some of the
    interplay between top-down and bottom-up processes in event
    understanding. I will outline a geometric model of low-level
    event segmentation, and discuss its potential role in children's
    verb learning. I will also discuss perception - action
    interactions and the role of motor cortex in action recognition.
    Here I will review recent EEG work in which we use the mu rhythm
    as indicator of mirror system activity to study action
    recognition in infants and learning by imitation in adults.

 Linda Smith
    Words and objects from the first person view: A dynamic and embodied
    approach to attention
    Understanding early word learning requires an understanding of
    the real-world physical and social environment in which learning
    takes place. However, the relevant aspects of this environment
    for the learner are only those that make contact with the
    learner's sensory system. I will present new findings (from a
    collaborative effort with Chen Yu, Hanako Yoshida, and Alfredo
    Pereira) using a novel method that seeks to describe the visual
    learning environment from a young child's point of view. The
    method consists of a multi-camera sensing environment consisting
    of two head-mounted mini cameras that are placed on both the
    child's and the parent's foreheads respectively. The main
    results is that the adult and child's view are fundamentally
    different in that the child's view is more dynamic and centered
    on one object at time. These findings have broad implications
    for how one thinks about toddler's attentional task as opposed
    to adults. In one sense, toddlers have found cheap solution:
    Selectively attend not by changing internal weights but by
    bringing the attended object close to your eyes so it is the
    only one in view.

 Felix Warneken
    Acting for and with others: Developmental and comparative
    perspectives on prosocial behavior
    What are the psychological prerequisites for prosocial behaviors
    such as altruistic helping and joint cooperative activities? By
    integrating a developmental and comparative perspective, I aim
    at elucidating aspects of prosocial behavior which humans share
    with their closest primate relatives from aspects which emerge
    only in human ontogeny. I will provide evidence that young
    children as well as chimpanzees possess the cognitive and
    motivational prerequisites for helping: They are able to
    understand another individual's unfulfilled goal and have the
    altruistic motivation to act on their behalf. With regard to
    cooperative activities, experimental evidence suggests that
    chimpanzees are not so much different from young children in
    their ability to coordinate their actions with another
    individual in a cooperative situation, but only human children
    appear to form a representation of these actions as part of a
    joint plan with a collective goal.


Jeremy Wyatt
    Cosy Speaker: On Architectures for Intelligent Robots:
    Distributed Representation & Shared Workspaces
    There are several strands of work on architectures for
    intelligent agents, from cognitive science, psychology, robotics
    and artificial intelligence. Each emphasises a different aspect
    of the problem, and offers a differently flavoured solution.
    Some emphasise a single, central model of the world, others the
    distributed nature of control, or the need for minimal
    representation, or hierarchy. I will talk about yet another
    architecture suitable for intelligent agents, or more strictly,
    an architectural schema. This emphasises the use of specialised
    representations, which are distributed across several work
    spaces, and refined collaboratively by several processes. This
    way of thinking allows us to explore answers to several problems
    such as: (what we call) the filtering problem; the binding
    problem; and the process management problem. I will support my
    argument by describing some case studies in which an
    implementation of the schema (CAS - CoSy Architecture Schema) is
    used to create specific architectural instantiations.

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