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Testing for the Non-Separability of Bi-Ambiguous Compounds

AAAI Conferences

Separability is a concept that is very difficult to define, and yet much of our scientific method is implicitly based upon the assumption that systems can sensibly be reduced to a set of interacting components. This paper examines the notion of separability in the creation of bi-ambiguous compounds that is based upon the CHSH and CH inequalities. It reports results of an experiment showing that violations of the CHSH and CH inequality can occur in human conceptual combination.


Toward Fast Mapping for Robot Adjective Learning

AAAI Conferences

Fast mapping is a phenomenon by which children learn the meanings of novel adjectives after a very small number of exposures when the new word is contrasted with a known word. The present study was a preliminary test of whether machine learners could use such contrasts in unconstrained speech to learn adjective meanings and categories. Six decision tree-based learning methods were evaluated that use contrasting examples in order to work toward an adjective fast-mapping system for machine learners. Subjects tended to compare objects using adjectives of the same category, implying that such contrasts may be a useful source of data about adjective meaning, though none of the learning algorithms showed strong advantages over any other.


The Role of Prompting and Feedback in Facilitating Studentsโ€™ Learning about Science with MetaTutor

AAAI Conferences

An experiment was conducted to test the efficacy of a new intelligent hypermedia system, MetaTutor, which is intended to prompt and scaffold the use of self-regulated learning (SRL) processes during learning about a human body system. Sixty-eight (N=68) undergraduate students learned about the human circulatory system under one of three conditions: prompt and feedback (PF), prompt-only (PO), and control (C) condition. The PF condition received timely prompts from animated pedagogical agents to engage in planning processes, monitoring processes, and learning strategies and also received immediate directive feedback from the agents concerning the deployment of the processes. The PO condition received the same timely prompts, but did not receive any feedback following the deployment of the processes. Finally, the control condition learned without any assistance from the agents during the learning session. All participants had two hours to learn using a 41-page hypermedia environment which included texts describing and static diagrams depicting various topics concerning the human circulatory system. Results indicate that the PF condition had significantly higher learning efficiency scores, when compared to the control condition. There were no significant differences between the PF and PO conditions. These results are discussed in the context of development of a fully-adaptive hypermedia learning system intended to scaffold self-regulated learning.


Stratification Learning through Homology Inference

AAAI Conferences

We develop a topological approach to stratification learning. Given point cloud data drawn from a stratified space, our objective is to infer which points belong to the same strata. First we define a multi-scale notion of a stratified space, giving a stratification for each radius level. We then use methods derived from kernel and cokernel persistent homology to cluster the data points into different strata, and we prove a result which guarantees the correctness of our clustering, given certain topological conditions. We later give bounds on the minimum number of sample points required to infer, with probability, which points belong to the same strata. Finally, we give an explicit algorithm for the clustering and apply it to some simulated data.


Requirements for Computational Models of Interactive Narrative

AAAI Conferences

The aim of this paper is to revisit the fundamental requirements for bulding computational models for Interactive Narrative. We express the need for broader computational models of narrative and underline the fundamental difference between models for story generation and models for Interactive Narrative. Research directions are finally sketched to move towards dedicated computational models for Interactive Narrative.


Assisting Scientists with Complex Data Analysis Tasks through Semantic Workflows

AAAI Conferences

To assist scientists in data analysis tasks, we have developed semantic workflow representations that support automatic constraint propagation and reasoning algorithms to manage constraints among the individual workflow steps. Semantic constraints can be used to represent requirements of input datasets as well as best practices for the method represented in a workflow. We demonstrate how the Wings workflow system uses semantic workflows to assist users in creating workflows while validating that the workflows comply with the requirements of the software components and datasets. Wings reasons over semantic workflow representations that consist of both a traditional dataflow graph as well as a network of constraints on the data and components of the workflow.


Emotive Non-Anthropomorphic Robots Perceived as More Calming, Friendly, and Attentive for Victim Management

AAAI Conferences

This paper describes results from a large-scale, complex human study using non-facial and non-verbal affect for victim management in robot-assisted Urban Search and Rescue Applications. Statistically significant results are presented that indicate participants felt emotive robots were more calming, friendlier, and attentive.


Collaborative Discourse, Engagement and Always-On Relational Agents

AAAI Conferences

We summarize our past, present and future research related to human-robot dialogue, starting with its foundations in collaborative discourse theory, continuing to our current research on recognizing and generating engagement, and concluding with an outline of new work we are beginning on the modeling of long-term relationships between humans and robots.


Making the Implicit Explicit: Issues and Approaches for Scaffolding Metacognitive Activity (Invited Talk)

AAAI Conferences

But moreover, the implicit nature Metacognitive activity is a core aspect of many multifaceted of metacognitive activities makes the goal of supporting practices, but supporting such activity in educational contexts metacognition perhaps an even larger challenge. When we is a complex endeavor. One example of such a practice think about the two major learning goals described above includes the substantive inquiry practices that different in the science inquiry example and other learning goals educational policy groups (for example, National Research put forth in many educational policies, we can the central Council 2000) recommend for K-12 student curricula, including challenge that we want to address with metacognitive support: those practices that involve more authentic types of (1) supporting novice learners to mindfully engage in scientific inquiry along with online inquiry activities that incorporate the metacognitive activity necessary to successfully participate a growing number of digital libraries and other in complex, multifaceted practices, and (2) supporting information resources. There are many characterizations novice learners to learn good metacognitive practiceswhat of inquiry, but we can succinctly describe inquiry as a set metacognitive activities are, why they are important, and of activities that involve: (1) asking and developing questions how to engage in them. Supporting metacognition is vital to investigate; (2) searching for and gathering relevant to essentially help make these implicit activities more explicit data and information; (3) reading, evaluating, and analyzing to learners, yet we continue to see how difficult it is to the gathered data and information; and (4) synthesizing provide such support.


Formal Measures of Dynamical Properties: Robustness and Sustainability

AAAI Conferences

Robustness and its many related concepts (stability, resilience, reliability, sustainability, etc.) are essential to understanding and maintaining systems of all kinds: engineered systems, ecologies, political regimes, computer algorithms, economies, homeostatic organisms, and decision procedures to name a few. However the concepts in this family have not been generally and formally defined and, as a result, the terms' uses across these various applications are inconsistent and sometimes contradictory. As part of a larger research project encompassing several categories of dynamical properties this paper distinguishes among several different robustness-related concepts using formal and general definitions of each. In addition to providing conceptual clarity through rigorous mathematical definitions, the techniques can also be used as domain-agnostic measures of the included properties. To help realize the potential of complex systems models we need such measures to capture features of processes that exhibit feedback, nonlinearity, heterogeneity, and emergence. The paper finishes with several branches of future work involving applications of these measures, more new measures for complex systems, and establishing of equivalence classes for the dynamics of complex systems for behavior-based categorization.