Learning of shared attention in sociable robotics

Sociable robots are embodied agents that are part of a heterogeneous society of robots and humans. They Should be able to recognize human beings and each other, and to engage in social, interactions. The use of a robotic architecture may strongly reduce the time and effort required to construct a sociable robot. Such architecture must have structures and mechanisms to allow social interaction. behavior control and learning from environment. Learning processes described oil Science of Behavior Analysis may lead to the development of promising methods and Structures for constructing robots able to behave socially and learn through interactions from the environment by a process of contingency learning. In this paper, we present a robotic architecture inspired from Behavior Analysis. Methods and structures of the proposed architecture, including a hybrid knowledge representation. are presented and discussed. The architecture has been evaluated in the context of a nontrivial real problem: the learning of the shared attention, employing an interactive robotic head. The learning capabilities of this architecture have been analyzed by observing the robot interacting with the human and the environment. The obtained results show that the robotic architecture is able to produce appropriate behavior and to learn from social interaction. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Modelling shared attention through relational reinforcement learning

Shared attention is a type of communication very important among human beings. It is sometimes reserved for the more complex form of communication being constituted by a sequence of four steps: mutual gaze, gaze following, imperative pointing and declarative pointing. Some approaches have been proposed in Human-Robot Interaction area to solve part of shared attention process, that is, the most of works proposed try to solve the first two steps. Models based on temporal difference, neural networks, probabilistic and reinforcement learning are methods used in several works. In this article, we are presenting a robotic architecture that provides a robot or agent, the capacity of learning mutual gaze, gaze following and declarative pointing using a robotic head interacting with a caregiver. Three learning methods have been incorporated to this architecture and a comparison of their performance has been done to find the most adequate to be used in real experiment. The learning capabilities of this architecture have been analyzed by observing the robot interacting with the human in a controlled environment. The experimental results show that the robotic head is able to produce appropriate behavior and to learn from sociable interaction.

ERP correlates of shared control mechanisms involved in saccade preparation and in covert attention

We investigated whether attention shifts and eye movement preparation are mediated by shared control mechanisms, as claimed by the premotor theory of attention. ERPs were recorded in three tasks where directional cues presented at the beginning of each trial instructed participants to direct their attention to the cued side without eye movements (Covert task), to prepare an eye movement in the cued direction without attention shifts (Saccade task) or both (Combined task). A peripheral visual Go/Nogo stimulus that was presented 800 ms after cue onset signalled whether responses had to be executed or withheld. Lateralised ERP components triggered during the cue–target interval, which are assumed to reflect preparatory control mechanisms that mediate attentional orienting, were very similar across tasks. They were also present in the Saccade task, which was designed to discourage any concomitant covert attention shifts. These results support the hypothesis that saccade preparation and attentional orienting are implemented by common control structures. There were however systematic differences in the impact of eye movement programming and covert attention on ERPs triggered in response to visual stimuli at cued versus uncued locations. It is concluded that, although the preparatory processes underlying saccade programming and covert attentional orienting may be based on common mechanisms, they nevertheless differ in their spatially specific effects on visual information processing.

Multi-agent collaboration for decision support in shared zones of intelligent buildings

In domain of intelligent buildings, saving energy in buildings and increasing preferences of occupants are two important factors. These factors are the important keys for evaluating the performance of work environment. In recent years, many researchers combine these areas to create the system that can change from original to the modern work environment called intelligent work environment. Due to advance of agent technology, it has received increasing attention in the area of intelligent pervasive environments. In this paper, we review several issues in intelligent buildings, with respect to the implementation of control system for intelligent buildings via multi-agent systems. Furthermore, we present the MASBO (Multi-Agent System for Building cOntrol) that has been implemented for controlling the building facilities to reach the balancing between energy efficiency and occupant’s comfort. In addition to enhance the MASBO system, the collaboration through negotiation among agents is presented.

Early social experience and individual differences in infants' joint attention

Fifty-nine healthy infants were filmed with their mothers and with a researcher at two, four, six and nine months in face-to-face play, and in toy-play at six and nine months. During toy-play at both ages, two indices of joint attention (JA)—infant bids for attention, and percent of time in shared attention—were assessed, along with other behavioural measures. Global ratings were made at all four ages of infants’ and mothers’ interactive style. The mothers varied in psychiatric history (e.g., half had experienced postpartum depression) and socioeconomic status, so their interactive styles were diverse. Variation in nine-month infant JA — with mother and with researcher — was predicted by variation in maternal behaviour and global ratings at six months, but not at two or four months. Concurrent adult behaviour also influenced nine-month JA, independent of infant ratings. Six-month maternal behaviours that positively predicted later JA (some of which remained important at nine months) included teaching, conjoint action on a toy, and global sensitivity. Other behaviours (e.g., entertaining) negatively predicted later JA. Findings are discussed in terms of social-learning and neurobiological accounts of JA emergence.

Disorder-specific functional abnormalities during sustained attention in youth with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and with Autism

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are often comorbid and share behavioural-cognitive abnormalities in sustained attention. A key question is whether this shared cognitive phenotype is based on common or different underlying pathophysiologies. To elucidate this question, we compared 20 boys with ADHD to 20 age and IQ matched ASD and 20 healthy boys using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during a parametrically modulated vigilance task with a progressively increasing load of sustained attention. ADHD and ASD boys had significantly reduced activation relative to controls in bilateral striato–thalamic regions, left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and superior parietal cortex. Both groups also displayed significantly increased precuneus activation relative to controls. Precuneus was negatively correlated with the DLPFC activation, and progressively more deactivated with increasing attention load in controls, but not patients, suggesting problems with deactivation of a task-related default mode network in both disorders. However, left DLPFC underactivation was significantly more pronounced in ADHD relative to ASD boys, which furthermore was associated with sustained performance measures that were only impaired in ADHD patients. ASD boys, on the other hand, had disorder-specific enhanced cerebellar activation relative to both ADHD and control boys, presumably reflecting compensation. The findings show that ADHD and ASD boys have both shared and disorder-specific abnormalities in brain function during sustained attention. Shared deficits were in fronto–striato–parietal activation and default mode suppression. Differences were a more severe DLPFC dysfunction in ADHD and a disorder-specific fronto–striato–cerebellar dysregulation in ASD.

Disorder-specific functional abnormalities during temporal discounting in youth with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Autism and comorbid ADHD and Autism

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are often comorbid and share cognitive abnormalities in temporal foresight. A key question is whether shared cognitive phenotypes are based on common or different underlying pathophysiologies and whether comorbid patients have additive neurofunctional deficits, resemble one of the disorders or have a different pathophysiology. We compared age- and IQ-matched boys with non-comorbid ADHD (18), non-comorbid ASD (15), comorbid ADHD and ASD (13) and healthy controls (18) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during a temporal discounting task. Only the ASD and the comorbid groups discounted delayed rewards more steeply. The fMRI data showed both shared and disorder-specific abnormalities in the three groups relative to controls in their brain-behaviour associations. The comorbid group showed both unique and more severe brain-discounting associations than controls and the non-comorbid patient groups in temporal discounting areas of ventromedial and lateral prefrontal cortex, ventral striatum and anterior cingulate, suggesting that comorbidity is neither an endophenocopy of the two pure disorders nor an additive pathology.

Complex visual hallucinations and attentional performance in eye disease and dementia: a test of the Perception and Attention Deficit model

OBJECTIVE This study aimed to test the prediction from the Perception and Attention Deficit model of complex visual hallucinations (CVH) that impairments in visual attention and perception are key risk factors for complex hallucinations in eye disease and dementia. METHODS Two studies ran concurrently to investigate the relationship between CVH and impairments in perception (picture naming using the Graded Naming Test) and attention (Stroop task plus a novel Imagery task). The studies were in two populations-older patients with dementia (n = 28) and older people with eye disease (n = 50) with a shared control group (n = 37). The same methodology was used in both studies, and the North East Visual Hallucinations Inventory was used to identify CVH. RESULTS A reliable relationship was found for older patients with dementia between impaired perceptual and attentional performance and CVH. A reliable relationship was not found in the population of people with eye disease. CONCLUSIONS The results add to previous research that object perception and attentional deficits are associated with CVH in dementia, but that risk factors for CVH in eye disease are inconsistent, suggesting that dynamic rather than static impairments in attentional processes may be key in this population.

Regionalist Protest through Shared Rule? Peripherality and the Use of Cantonal Initiatives in Switzerland

In this article, we are interested in the extent to which federalism is able to deal with peripheral protest through shared rule channels. Shared rule as a key dimension of federal states has not thus far received adequate academic attention. Empirically, we analyse the use of all cantonal initiatives in Switzerland over the past 25 years as a particular instrument of shared rule, subsequently focusing on two peripheral regions with successful regionalist parties, Ticino and Geneva. We find that regionalist parties contribute towards radicalizing peripheral demands in search of attention from the centre. This leads to the mainstreaming of peripheral demands by pulling other parties along. We conclude that shared rule properly designed gives even the most peripheral regions a voice in national decisions, but that regionalist parties may also use shared rule instruments to mobilize their electorate at home to fight their non-regionalist competitors.

The attention/support to students in the socio-labor transition

In the present paper I intend to put forward some inquiries regarding the socio-labor guidance and transition of the young people in the co-ordinates of contemporary society. The outstanding paradox in which some young people are immersed when trying to get a first, second, third employment is also analyzed: "The job of looking for a job". This is a common experience shared by many young people when they try to find a place in the complex labor panorama. Looking for a job is a recurrent situation in contemporary society, given the high dose of precarious employment in which the productive world moves. Life-long jobs belong to the past and what is normal is that people strive to enter the competitive labor market repeatedly. Moreover, the paper offers the partial results of a larger research project that approaches tutorship, decision taking and expectations before the academic-labor future of the studentship in the last years of secondary school. Finally, I suggest some insights in the line that it is not longer feasible to work with old-fashioned guidance, trying to channel people's vocation and offering them information so that they get a job that provides them with the happiness of "doing what you like". Behind these ideas lay the normal biographies, the predictable itineraries. Labor market complexity makes the transition to working life very difficult. Once immersed in it, biographies and labor itineraries are constructed and reconstructed at the rhythm of the changing fortunes of times.

The attention/support to students in the socio-labor transition

In the present paper I intend to put forward some inquiries regarding the socio-labor guidance and transition of the young people in the co-ordinates of contemporary society. The outstanding paradox in which some young people are immersed when trying to get a first, second, third employment is also analyzed: "The job of looking for a job". This is a common experience shared by many young people when they try to find a place in the complex labor panorama. Looking for a job is a recurrent situation in contemporary society, given the high dose of precarious employment in which the productive world moves. Life-long jobs belong to the past and what is normal is that people strive to enter the competitive labor market repeatedly. Moreover, the paper offers the partial results of a larger research project that approaches tutorship, decision taking and expectations before the academic-labor future of the studentship in the last years of secondary school. Finally, I suggest some insights in the line that it is not longer feasible to work with old-fashioned guidance, trying to channel people's vocation and offering them information so that they get a job that provides them with the happiness of "doing what you like". Behind these ideas lay the normal biographies, the predictable itineraries. Labor market complexity makes the transition to working life very difficult. Once immersed in it, biographies and labor itineraries are constructed and reconstructed at the rhythm of the changing fortunes of times.

The attention/support to students in the socio-labor transition

In the present paper I intend to put forward some inquiries regarding the socio-labor guidance and transition of the young people in the co-ordinates of contemporary society. The outstanding paradox in which some young people are immersed when trying to get a first, second, third employment is also analyzed: "The job of looking for a job". This is a common experience shared by many young people when they try to find a place in the complex labor panorama. Looking for a job is a recurrent situation in contemporary society, given the high dose of precarious employment in which the productive world moves. Life-long jobs belong to the past and what is normal is that people strive to enter the competitive labor market repeatedly. Moreover, the paper offers the partial results of a larger research project that approaches tutorship, decision taking and expectations before the academic-labor future of the studentship in the last years of secondary school. Finally, I suggest some insights in the line that it is not longer feasible to work with old-fashioned guidance, trying to channel people's vocation and offering them information so that they get a job that provides them with the happiness of "doing what you like". Behind these ideas lay the normal biographies, the predictable itineraries. Labor market complexity makes the transition to working life very difficult. Once immersed in it, biographies and labor itineraries are constructed and reconstructed at the rhythm of the changing fortunes of times.

Concurrency in prolog using threads and a shared database

Concurrency in Logic Programming has received much attention in the past. One problem with many proposals, when applied to Prolog, is that they involve large modifications to the standard implementations, and/or the communication and synchronization facilities provided do not fit as naturally within the language model as we feel is possible. In this paper we propose a new mechanism for implementing synchronization and communication for concurrency, based on atomic accesses to designated facts in the (shared) datábase. We argüe that this model is comparatively easy to implement and harmonizes better than previous proposals within the Prolog control model and standard set of built-ins. We show how in the proposed model it is easy to express classical concurrency algorithms and to subsume other mechanisms such as Linda, variable-based communication, or classical parallelism-oriented primitives. We also report on an implementation of the model and provide performance and resource consumption data.

The resource consumption principle: attention and memory in volumes of neural tissue.

In the cerebral cortex, the small volume of the extracellular space in relation to the volume enclosed by synapses suggests an important functional role for this relationship. It is well known that there are atoms and molecules in the extracellular space that are absolutely necessary for synapses to function (e.g., calcium). I propose here the hypothesis that the rapid shift of these atoms and molecules from extracellular to intrasynaptic compartments represents the consumption of a shared, limited resource available to local volumes of neural tissue. Such consumption results in a dramatic competition among synapses for resources necessary for their function. In this paper, I explore a theory in which this resource consumption plays a critical role in the way local volumes of neural tissue operate. On short time scales, this principle of resource consumption permits a tissue volume to choose those synapses that function in a particular context and thereby helps to integrate the many neural signals that impinge on a tissue volume at any given moment. On longer time scales, the same principle aids in the stable storage and recall of information. The theory provides one framework for understanding how cerebral cortical tissue volumes integrate, attend to, store, and recall information. In this account, the capacity of neural tissue to attend to stimuli is intimately tied to the way tissue volumes are organized at fine spatial scales.