Home page for Dr Dean Petters School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT email: d.d.petters@cs.bham.ac.uk I am an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Computer Science, My teaching interests include: Cognitive Psychology Developmental Psychology Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science

Outside of my head

My research interests include: Taking a computational approach to understanding Emotions - in particular social and emotional phenomana described by Bowlby-Ainsworth Attachment Theory and phenomena linked to loss of control of various kinds: - information processing theories of emotion; - the modelling and simulation of artificial emotions (particularly artificial attachment). - the emergence of emotional control states within cognitive architectures; - the information processing foundations of Bowlby-Ainsworth Attachment Theory; - updating Bowlby's conception of the attachment control system with concepts of architecture and control from contemporary AI and Cognitive Science. - Agent Based Modeling which uses Autonomous agent and Multi-agent Simulations to conduct research in Attachment Theory (including the evolution of attachment) and in the development of infant problem solving. Visual Perception - using behavioural experiments together with Neural Network Modelling to conduct research which investigates: - the development of object recognition through adolescence; - visual attention as an emergent phenomena; - the role of attention in relational perception and thinking.

Inside of my head

Links to groups and societies I am a member of or associated with

I am Registered as a Chartered Psychologist by the British Psychological Society

I am a member of:

• The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour
• The International Society for Research in Emotion
• The HUMAINE Association for researchers in emotion-oriented/affective computing

Research in Emotion and Attachment Theory.

Selected publications:

D. Petters and E. Waters, (2013). Epistemic Actions in Attachment Relationships and the Origin of the Socially Extended Mind. In Proceedings of 'Re-conceptualizing Mental "Illness": The View From Enactivist Philosophy and Cognitive Science', AISB Convention 2013 , (pp. 17-23).

D. Petters, E. Waters, and A. Sloman (2011). Modelling Machines which can Love: From Bowlby's Attachment Control System to Requirements for Romantic Robots. Emotion Researcher 26, (2), 5-7

D. Petters and E. Waters (2010). AI, Attachment Theory, and Simulating Secure Base Behaviour: Dr. Bowlby meet the Reverend Bayes. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on 'AI-Inspired Biology', AISB Convention 2010, (pp. 51-58). University of Sussex, Brighton: AISB Press.

D. Petters, E. Waters, and F. Schönbrodt, (2010). Strange Carers: Robots as Attachment Figures and Aids to Parenting. Interaction Studies: Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systems. 11:2, 246-252. (Preprint of target article: Sharkey, N., and Sharkey, A. The crying shame of robot nannies: an ethical appraisal. can be downloaded from here )

D. Petters (2006). Implementing a Theory of Attachment: A Simulation of the Strange Situation with Autonomous Agents, In Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Cognitive Modelling (April 2006, Trieste), pages 226-231, Trieste: Edizioni Golardiche.

D. Petters (2004). Simulating Infant-Carer Relationship Dynamics, In Proceedings of the AAAI Spring Symposium, (March 2004, Stanford): Architectures for Modelling Emotion - Cross-Disciplinary Foundations, number SS-04-02 in AAAI Technical reports, pages 114-122, Menlo Park, CA: AAAI Press.

Further related papers can be downloaded from my publications page.

Much of this research originated in my PhD with Computational modelling of Infant Secure-base behaviour using Autonomous and Multi-agent systems I did my PhD in Cognitive Science under the supervision of Aaron Sloman (Professor of Cognitive Science). My PhD research was multidisciplinary, using software agents to do psychological research. Since it involved no empirical studying of real humans it was a kind of theoretical psychology. It involved designing and building agents which attempted to capture aspects of: infant secure-base behaviour; and individual differences in infant-carer attachment relationships. Since finishing my PhD I have continued this line of research and extended it. I have considered alternative information processing approaches for modeling attachment phenomena and also assessed the prospects for attachment relationships between humans and artefacts designed to attach to humans.

Future aims:

• to develop a diverse set of simulations which possess control states that are functionally equivalent to emotional or other kinds of control states that are believed to exist in human adults.
• port a subset of the sim-agent toolkit to the Java programming language so that the simulations become more accessible to researchers outside of the AI community.
• attempt to capture in agent-based simulations other interesting behavioural phenomena seen in the first year of life. This might include extending my current simulations or using alternative cognitive architectures and toolkits for cognitive modelling
• to develop the attachment scenarios from my PhD to incorporate more complex naturalistic secure base behaviours;

Research in Vision

Visual Object Recognition, Geon Theory

I am currently collaborating with Dr Martin Jüttner (Aston University), Prof Jules Davidoff (Goldsmiths College, University of London). and Prof John Hummel (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on research which I started doing as a Research Fellow in the Cognitive and Perceptual Systems Research Group in the Psychology Department of Aston University.

This research involves investigating how holistic (view-dependent) and configural (view-independent) forms of object recognition develop from age seven through adolescence to adult levels of performance. My part in the project has involved carrying out experiments and running computational simulations. Experiments were designed, implemented, and calibrated with Martin Jüttner at Aston University, and were carried out in primary and secondary schools in the Birmingham and Worcestershire areas. The simulation work is ongoing and has been carried out with John Hummel. It is concerned producing and evaluating an adolescent variant of the geon based JIM3 simulation of object recognition.

I am currently using the Jim3 simulation to model our developmental findings with animal and artefact stimuli. Preliminary results show that weakening Jim3's ability to form metric relations produces a pattern of simulation results similar to that which we found in our empirical testing of adolescents.

In Preparation:

D. Petters, J. Hummel, M. Juttner, E. Wakui, S. Kaur, and J. Davidoff, (In Prep). Modelling How Improvements in Relational Processing can account for Developmental Trajectories in Object Recognition Performance

Selected publications:

E. Wakui, M. Juttner, D. Petters, S. Kaur, J. Hummel, and J. Davidoff, (2013). Earlier development of analytic than holistic object recognition in adolescence PLoS ONE 8(4): e61041. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0061041

M. Juttner, E. Wakui, D. Petters, S. Kaur, and J. Davidoff, (2013). Developmental Trajectories for Part-based and Configural Object Recognition in Adolescence. Developmental Psychology 49 (1) 161-176 (Online first publication March 26, 2012)

Attention

I am interested in how attention can be modelled as an emergent phenomenon, and would like to extend this approach to attention to simulations of object recognition.

Recent Academic Teaching posts

• tutoring in Psychology with the Open University (2010-ongoing)
• lecturing in Psychology at Newman University College (2010-2011)
• lecturing in AI and Cognitive Science at the University of Birmingham (2006-2009),

Tutoring in Psychology with the Open University

Since January 2010 I have been an Associate Lecturer with the Open University. In October 2010 I started tutoring on DSE212 Exploring Psychology. This is a second year module which gives a broad overview to a variety of areas within psychology and includes two short research projects. One project is quantitative and involves the use of SPSS to analyse experimental data, the other project is qualitative and involves using thematic analysis. In addition, in January 2011 I started tutoring on DD303 Cognitive Psychology. This is a third year module which includes material on perceptual processes, memory, concepts and language, thought, emotion and consciousness. This content is integrated with material on a variety of relevant research methods including a quantitative research project. Recently, in February 2013, I started tutoring on DSE141. This is a first year module which focuses on nine topics, from the study of aggression, to reinforcement learning, Attachment Theory, and theories of friendship, with also material on language, attention and memory.

Lecturing in Psychology at Newman University College, 2010-2011

In the spring semester of academic year 2009-2010 I lectured in Psychology at Newman University College. I delivered and examined the Cognitive Psychology component of the first year undergraduate module - Cognition and Brain, and all of the second year undergraduate module on Cognitive Psychology. Responsibility for these modules involved supervising and examining practical work as well as conducting lectures. The Cognitive Psychology material which was covered included material on perceptual cognition (object recognition and attention); language (animal communication, language production in speech and writing); memory (architectures for memory and autobiographical memory); knowledge; consciousness; cognitive modelling; cognitive architectures; and other aspects of high level cognition (problem solving, judgement, decision making, and reasoning). I also acted as a supervisor for final year dissertation projects in Forensic Psychology and research projects on the MSc in Clinical Applications in Psychology. In 2011 I returned as a part-time visiting lecturer delivering the second year Cognitive Psychology module I previously wrote and taught as a fulltime lecturer.

Lecturing in AI and Cognitive Science at the University of Birmingham

In the spring semesters of academic years 2006-2007 to 2008-2009, in the School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, I taught the first year undergraduate module Artificial Intelligence Principles. This module covered a wide range of AI techniques, including search and planning, and surveyed a number of representations used in AI and Cognitive Science. It provided an introduction to Propositional and Predicate Calculus, Neural Networks and Production Systems, and showed how these formalisms are used in AI and Cognitive Science. It also included coverage of Cognitive Science theories and simulations from the domains of: vision, learning, decision making, and problem solving.

Though the Artificial Intelligence Principles module is no longer being taught, I remain a Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Computer Science until December 2015.

Bits and pieces to download or view

my publications

slides from talks

mpeg movies of some simulations I coded a while back (Thank to Aaron Sloman for producing these)

some personal pictures