UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE
     COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM

                presents
 
    "Approaches to Spoken Language Acquisition 
  by a Computational Learning Agent using KLAIR"

             Dr. Mark Huckvale
    (Speech, Hearing & Phonetic Sciences,
	       University College London)


      19 November 2010 (FRIDAY)
        Lecture Theatre E351
     Hatfield, College Lane Campus
         	1 -2 pm


      Everyone is Welcome to Attend

      Refreshments will be available


Abstract:

In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in the
construction of practical computational systems for language
acquisition. Some of this work focuses on the computational modelling
aspects, using corpora of real or simulated adult-infant interactions,
either as audio signals or transcriptions. Other work embodies the
learning agent in a robot body, to obtain multi-modal interactions
with caregivers.

At UCL we have developed a virtual infant, KLAIR, which uses an animated
3D head and a real-time articulatory synthesizer to communicate using
speech. The longer term goals of the KLAIR project are to evaluate
theories of the acquisition of speech perception and production using
a real-time interactive computational learning agent.

In this talk I will motivate our general approach to using real-time
interaction with humans to acquire knowledge about speech production
and perception. I will describe the technical components within KLAIR
and demonstrate their operation. Finally I will discuss why I believe
that studies of spoken language acquisition by artefacts needs to be
placed within a quantitative experimental framework, and suggest routes
in which this may be achieved.

Huckvale, M., Howard, I., Fagel, S., "KLAIR: a Virtual Infant for Spoken
Language Acquisition Research", Interspeech 2009, Brighton, U.K.


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Hertfordshire Computer Science Research Colloquium
http://homepages.stca.herts.ac.uk/~nehaniv/colloq