UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE
             COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM

                            presents

        Learning to Say "No": From Toddlers to Robots and back

                         Frank Foerster

                 (Adaptive Systems Research Group,
                    School of Computer Science
                    University of Hertfordshire)

                    6 November 2013 (Wednesday)
                          1 pm -2 pm

                  Hatfield, College Lane Campus
                       Seminar Room C152

                  Everyone is Welcome to Attend

                  Refreshments will be available


Abstract:

In this talk we will present and discuss the design and outcome of
experiments that were designed to tackle the acquisition of negative words
based on unconstrained human-robot dialogues. Research on early child
language development indicates that the first productive negative words
of toddlers are linked to affect. This indication lead us to extend the
notion of symbol grounding, which is typically based on the linkage of
linguistic symbols with sensorimotor data, to include motivation values
originating from a very simple motivation system of a humanoid.

The experiments further exploited the natural tendency of humans to
engage in so called intent interpretations, whose potential role on
language acquisition will be discussed based on our experimental results.

We will further show the relevance of both the outcome as well as the
methodology of these experiments for developmental robotics as well as 
psycholinguistics and language-oriented developmental psychology.

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Hertfordshire Computer Science Research Colloquium
http://cs-colloq.stca.herts.ac.uk