IJCNN2006 – Special Session on “Modeling the Evolution and Acquisition of Language”

 

Submission deadline extended: February 15, 2006

 

Organizers: Angelo Cangelosi (University of Plymouth), Leonid Perlovsky (Air Force Research Lab, Hanscom AFB), Jose Fernando Fontanari (Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Carlos)

 

Scope of Special Session:

 

Computational models of language evolution and acquisition have the scope to investigate the role of developmental factors and of biological and cultural evolution in the emergence of language. The past decade has seen an impressive production of language evolution and acquisition models using a variety of computational intelligent techniques including neural networks, multi-agent models and robotics. In particular, various neural network models have been recently developed for the control of language in cognitive agents and robots. These models can have both a scientific and a technological impact. From a scientific point of view, simulation models require a better operational definition of language evolution and development theories. This will therefore permit the validation, or rejection, of some of the theoretical assumptions and hypothesis on the mechanisms that might have contributed to the emergence of language. From a technological point of view, the simulation experiments with cognitive agents and robots able to developed shared lexicons can give important insights on the techniques and algorithms for the design of interactive and communicating intelligent systems.

 

This special session has the scope of providing a forum for the presentation of the latest models and finding on language evolution and acquisition models and the discussion and identification of the most promising future research directions. The special session invites submissions in any of the following areas:

 

  • Neural network models of language evolution and acquisition
  • Biological evolution of communication and language
  • Cultural evolution of language
  • Robotics and agent models of linguistic interaction
  • Cognitive models of pre-linguistic abilities (imitation, attention, categorization etc.)
  • Emergence of language
  • Models of animal communication
  • Interaction between language and cognition
  • Action models of language
  • Grounding of language
  • Evolutionary computation applications to language studies

 

Submission

All special session papers must be submitted through the WCCI submission webpage, where Instructions for Authors are also available.

http://www.wcci2006.org/WCCI-Web_paper_submit.html

Note that the space limit is now 8 pages. Please choose "S. Modeling the Evolution and Acquisition of Language”" as your main research topic. Please notify me beforehand if you are interested in submitting a paper to the Special Session, by sending me an email to acangelosi@plymouth.ac.uk

  Important dates:

 

          o Submission: February 15, 2006 (deadline extended)

          o Notification: March 15, 2006

          o Camera ready: April 15, 2006

 

Bios

 

Dr. Angelo Cangelosi <http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/soc/staff/angelo> is a Reader at the School of Computing, Communication & Electronics of Plymouth University (UK). He received his PhD in Psychology in 1997 at the University of Genoa (Italy). During his PhD he worked with Domenico Parisi at the Institute of Psychology of the Italian National Research Council. He also was a visiting scholar at the University of California at San Diego (in Jeff Elman's Center for Research in Language), and at the University of Southampton (in Stevan Harnad's Cognitive Science Centre). Since 1997 he has been at the University of Plymouth. Angelo Cangelosi's main research interests are on cognitive modelling using evolutionary computation and connectionist models. His current research projects include models of the evolution of language and communication, the symbol grounding problem in categorisation and symbol acquisition, and experimental and connectionist modelling of spatial language. He leads the research group in Adaptive Behaviour and Cognition <http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/soc/research/ABC> and is a member of the "Centre for Interactive Intelligent Systems".

 

Dr. Leonid Perlovsky is Principal Research Physicist and Technical Advisor at the Air Force Research Laboratory/SNHE. Previously, from 1985 to 1999, he served as Chief Scientist at Nichols Research, a $0.5 B high-tech organization, leading the corporate research in intelligent systems, information science, neural networks, optimization, sensor fusion, and algorithm development. In the past he served as professor at Novosibirsk University and New York University. He participated as a principal in commercial startups developing tools for text understanding, biotechnology, and financial predictions. He published about 50 papers in refereed scientific journals and about 250 papers in conferences, delivered invited keynote plenary talks and authored a book "Neural Networks and Intellect: model-based concepts", Oxford University Press, 2001 (currently in the 3rd printing). In 2005 Dr. Perlovsky was awarded Distinguished Member of the IEEE Boston Section Award. Dr. Perlovsky serves on IEEE Computational Intelligence Neural Network Technical Committee, Computational Intelligence Society Multimedia Tutorial Committee, Computational Intelligence Technical Committee for Data Mining, IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence WCCI’2006 Operating Committee, as General Chair for IEEE International Conference on Integrating of Knowledge Intensive Multi-Agent Systems (KIMAS’03, KIMAS’05, KIMAS’07), Program Chair for IEEE International Conference on Computational Intelligence Measurement Systems and Applications (CIMSA’04, CIMSA’05 and CIMSA’06), Chair IEEE Boston Computational Intelligence Chapter, Editor-at-large for a World Scientific journal "Natural Computations" and as Editor-in-Chief for an Elsevier journal “Physics of Life Reviews.”

 

Dr. José Fernando Fontanari is Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. His main research interest is the application of concepts and ideas of Physics to problems in Biology, in particular, biological evolution. He is a member of  the editorial board of Physics of Life Reviews and Theory in Biosciences, and was elected Fellow of the Institute of Physics  in August 2004.