We propose and give a preliminary test of a new metric for the quality of the commonsense knowledge and reasoning of large AI databases: Using the same measurement as is used for a four-year-old, namely, an IQ test for young children. We report on results obtained us- ing test questions we wrote in the spirit of the questions of the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence, Third Edition (WPPSI-III) on the ConceptNet system, which were, on the whole, quite strong.

Artifact capabilities can play an important role in understanding human cognition. Over time humans learn to use artifacts, evolve the knowledge and combine acquired capabilities with others to form complex capabilities. In this study we present a hybrid ontology of artifacts to facilitate learning artifact capabilities. We develop a framework where agents simultaneously exploit a centralized artifact ontology in the environment and a distributed artifact ontology local to each agent. We demonstrate how both ontologies can be used by agents both in the artifact selection process and in learning artifact use. The local ontology serves as domain knowledge gained by the agent as it learns. We illustrate an example to show how an acquired artifact capability can be stored in an agent's local ontology for future use.

This paper addresses questions of the transition related to conscious processes and unconscious processes, namely aims to substantiating a primary framework to the following open question: The vast majority of brain activity is non-conscious. What is the criterion to distinguish the non-conscious activities from conscious ones? To support our answers in a principled way, we present a general framework for the study of mental processes resting on two main principles: firstly, we endorse Matte Blanco’s principle of symmetry by giving central stage to the concept of unconscious processes. Secondly, to structure and combine the notions of infinity and part-whole equivalence in a mathematical logic method, moreover we base our work on modern non-classical logics in the disposition of context-dependency, as forcefully put forward by CJS Clarke. In particular, we employ the paraconsistent logic as the underlying logical system for defining the general framework for mental processes, highly structural and formal representation, called bi-logic framework.

Household appliances such as dishwashers, televisions and radios are an indispensable part of the modern household. Yet, people who have some form of physical impairment often find that they are unable to make use of these commonly available appliances, to the detriment of their lifestyle. This paper proposes a gesture interface for home appliances that can be used by people with physical impairments. Two simulated gesture controlled appliances are developed and evaluated by physically impaired people. The results show that this interface is able to allow physically impaired people to make use of modern appliances by gesture.

The increasingly prevalent view that recommendation is a conversation between user and system is driving a renewed interest in approaches to system design that involve the user in meaningful ways. In addition to this the proliferation of mobile devices and the near-ubiquity of sensing technologies means that there are now many opportunities to capture real-life experiences, in real-time, providing a new source of raw material for case-based reasoning. In this paper we consider the availability of real-world exercise information, in this cases corresponding to jogging routes, and meth- ods by which we can involve a user in recommending such routes. We describe the Exercise Builder, a proof-of-concept application that attempts to help visitors to a new city to plan their jogging routes by combining case retrieval, interactive adaptation, and multimedia explanation in a single online service.

While similarity and retrieval in case-based reasoning (CBR) have received a lot of attention in the literature, other aspects of CBR, such as case reuse are less understood. Specifically, we focus on one of such, less understood, problems: "knowledge transfer". The issue we intend to elucidate can be expressed as follows: what knowledge present in a source case is transferred to a target problem in case-based inference? This paper presents a preliminary formal model of knowledge transfer and relates it to the classical notion of analogy.

This paper presents a case study in combining Lego Mindstorms NXT with Matlab/Simulink to help students in an undergraduate Machine Learning course study genetic algorithm design and testing. The project uses the VU-LRT toolbox to enable students to access the hardware capabilities of the Mindstorms platform from within Matlab. The course's enrollment was comprised of students from several majors with a variety of programming backgrounds. The course is part of an interdisciplinary cognitive science concentration. We report on the VU-LRT toolbox, the considerations imposed by the diversity of the student population on the design of the laboratory module and student evaluations of the laboratory module.

The formal semantics of speech acts, even in the classical framework of illocutionary logic, requires considerations that go beyond individual speech activity and beyond the interpretation of individual sentences. We show how the formal semantics of speech acts can be extended to take into account the social effects and interactive aspects of illocutionary activity. To illustrate our approach, we focus on the semantics of assertions and descriptive discourse, contrasting the individual aspect of speaker's meaning and the epistemic effects of assertion making. The approach presented in this paper generalizes to all other types of illocutionary acts, adding specific content to the conversational record that registers the common ground of speakers and hearers as a dialogue unfolds.

The paper investigates a phenomenon of free word order through the analysis by reduction. It exploits its formal background and data types and studies the word order freedom by means of the minimal number of word order shifts (word order changes preserving syntactic correctness, individual word forms, their morphological characteristics and/or their surface dependency relations). The investigation focuses upon an interplay of two phenomena related to word order: (non-)projectivity of a sentence and number of word order shifts within the analysis by reduction. This interplay is exemplified on a sample of Czech sentences with clitics.

Several authors analyzed propositional attitudes ( wish , fear , regret , glad ) by integrating their epistemic and deontic components. This paper extends previous work done by the author and presents a logical calculus inspired by Possibility Theory, a non-compositional version of fuzzy logic.