Background

The aim of this workshop is bring together international experts from the different empirical disciplines interested in socio-cultural phenomena and language (e.g. cognitive and social psychology, social sciences, linguistics, neuroscience) with researchers involved in computational and robotics modeling of social and linguistic phenomena. Such an interdisciplinary gathering will lead to the identification of the open research and methodological challenges, and key scientific questions for future research in the field.

Recent advances in psycholinguistics, neuroscience and linguistics support an embodied view of cognition, i.e. the fact that cognitive functions (perception, categorization, reasoning, language) are strictly intertwined with embodiment processes (Wilson 2002). This is particularly evident in recent studies on the grounding of language, where perceptual and sensorimotor mechanisms support the language processing (Barsalou 1999; Zwaan & Pecher 2005). In addition, the social and cultural aspects of language also play a crucial role in the development of such an integrated cognitive system. For example, Galantucci (2009) used novel experimental semiotics approaches for studying communication as a form of joint action. Garrod and collaborators (Pickering & Garrod 2004; Fay et al. 2000) have looked at group discussion as interactive dialogue and the general mechanism of interactive alignment in social groups. Ginsburg (2010) analyzed how dialog is dynamically achieved and stabilized during social communication. Furthermore, the role of emotions has been demonstrated to play an important role in the modulation of higher-order cognitive and socio-cultural functions such as language (Glenberg et al. 2005; Pennebaker 1997), culture (Wierzbicka 1999) and music emotions (Coutinho & Cangelosi, 2009). Finally, computational text analysis tools and methods provide important insights on the role of socio-cultural factors in linguistic communication, such as the linguistic enquiry and word count method (Pennebaker et al. 2007).

Speakers

  • Bruno Galantucci

    Haskins Lab Yale. Talk: Social factors in the emergence of human communication systems .

  • Robert Kozma

    Memphis University. Talk on cognitive neurodynamics.

  • Joanna Bryson

    Bath University. Talk: The scientific application of agent-based modelling: From biology to anthropology.

  • Moshe Bar

    Harvard Medica School, USA. Talk: The Proactive Brain: Predictions in Visual Cognition.

  • Andre Wlodarczyk

    Paris Sorbonne University. Talk on modeling integral linguistic communication as a distributed system.

  • Antonio Sanfilippo

    Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA. Talk on Modeling radical rhetoric.

  • Ken Boff

    Georgia Tech, USA. Talk on AFOSR Programmes.

  • Matthew Schlesinger

    Southern Illinois University. Talk on developmental psychology and computational modeling.

  • Istvan Kecskes

    State University of New York, Albany. Talk: Context, culture, cognition.

  • Giorgio Ganis

    Harvard Medical School USA and Plymouth University UK. Talk on cognitive neuroscience of deception.

  • Alessandro Vinciarelli

    Glasgow University, UK. Talk: Social Signal Processing: understanding nonverbal communication in social interactions.

  • David Sallach

    Chicago University, USA. Talk on social agent modelling.

  • Angelo Cangelosi

    University of Plymouth, UK. Talk: Symbol grounding in multi-agent systems and robots.

The Programme, Book of Abstracts and Videos of Talks

Download the workshop programme and Book of Abstracts here. . A list of links to the videos of the talks is here.

Day Two

Terry Lyons and Angelo Cangelosi

Simon Garrod

Bruno Galantucci

Giorgio Ganis

Moshe Bar

Matt Schlesinger.

Lunch break.

John Scott

David Sallach

Working Group session I

Day Two

Joanna Bryson

David Traum

Fernando Fontanari

Robert Kozma

Leonid Perlovsky

 

Lunch break.

Working Group sessions II

Istavn Kecskes

Claudio Cioffi-Revilla

Angelo Cangelosi

Day Three

Alessandro Vinciarelli

Andre Wlodarczyk

Antonio Sanfilippo

Working Group sessions III

General discussion

 

Lunch break.

Workshop ends