2009

Beverly Park Woolf de l’University of Massachusetts, Department of Computer Science donnera une conférence le 27 novembre de 15h à 17h à la Salle des boiseries (J-2810) Pavillon Judith-Jasmin, Université du Québec à Montréal 405, rue Sainte-Catherine Est, Montréal Métro Berri-UQAM

Abstract : This presentation describes how to recognize students’ emotion while they solve mathematics problems. We use sensors in intelligent tutors to detect students’ affective states and then embed emotional support in the tutor. The tutor dynamically collected data streams of physiological activity and students’ self-reports of emotions. Evidence indicates that fluctuating student emotions are related to larger, longer-term affective variables such as self-concept in mathematics. Students produced self-reports of their emotions and models were created to automatically infer these emotions from physiological data from the sensors. Summaries of student physiological activity helped to predict more than 80% of the variance of students’ emotional states.

We also evaluated the use of animated emotional embodied pedagogical agents and their impact on student motivation and achievement within the intelligent tutor. We integrated controlled exploration of agents’ communicative factors (facial expression, empathy, and mirroring postures) as they impact human learning, interaction and relationship development. Empirical studies show that students in the learning companions group increased their math value, self-concept and mastery orientation. Students’ self-reports of emotions while using the learning companions showed higher levels of interest and reduced boredom after 15 minutes of use of the tutor. This research also provides evidence that by modifying the “context” of the tutoring system we may well be able to optimize students’ emotion reports and in turn improve math attitudes.

Biographie : Beverly Park Woolf, Ph.D., is a Research Professor at the University of Massachusetts. Her team develops and deploys intelligent tutors that model student affective and cognitive characteristics and combine cognitive analysis of learning with artificial intelligence, network technology and multimedia. These systems represent the knowledge taught, recognize which skills students have learned, use sensors and machine learning to model student affect, and adjust problems to help individual students. Tutors have been deployed in education and industry, in a variety of disciplines (chemistry, psychology, physics, geology, art history, mathematics and economics) and one is used by more than 100,000 students per semester across 100 colleges. Some of these tutors enable students to pass state standard exam at a higher rate (92%) as compared with students not using the tutor (76%). Dr. Woolf published the book Building Intelligent Interactive Tutors along with over 200 articles ; she has delivered keynote addresses, panels and tutorials in more than 20 foreign countries and is a fellow of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence.

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Hugo Mercier du programme de Philosophie, Politique et Economie de l’Université de Pennsylvanie donnera une conférence le 13 novembre de 9h30h à 12h en salle DS-1950 (UQAM, Pavillon DeSève, métro Berri-UQAM)

Café et viennoiseries seront servis

Résumé : Le raisonnement est généralement compris comme un outil de la cognition individuelle. Raisonner devrait nous permettre de corriger les erreurs de nos intuitions et, ce faisant, nous faire parvenir à de meilleures croyances et de meilleures décisions. La théorie argumentative du raisonnement s’oppose à ces théories classiques et assigne au raisonnement une fonction sociale : trouver des arguments pour défendre nos idées durant des discussions, et examiner les arguments offerts par nos interlocuteurs. De nombreuses données de la psychologie du raisonnement et de la prise de décision et de la psychologie sociale soutiennent la théorie argumentative.

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Geoffrey Hinton du Canadian Institute for Advanced Research et de l’Université de Toronto donnera une conférence le 23 octobre de 15hs à 17hs dans la salle DS-1950 (Métro Berri-UQAM, pavillon De Sève)

Abstract : Systems that adapt need to explore the space of possible adaptations. I will describe several biological examples where a system that adapts slowly avoids a lot of slow exploration by using a system that adapts much more rapidly to create a search space that is much easier for the slow system to explore. For example, learning changes the search space for evolution, thus allowing learning organisms to adapt their DNA much faster than organisms that do not learn. Similarly, reactions that happen at a sub-millesecond timescale in mass-spring systems change the search space for neural motor control. I will then argue that biological adaptation is entering a new phase in which computers will greatly accelerate the speed at which we learn by using rapid optimization to change the search space for learning. A designer, for example, will be able to explore the space of objective functions for evaluating designs rather than exploring the space of designs. Computer optimization is the next term in the series : Evolution, development, learning ...

Geoffrey E. Hinton’s Biographical Sketch

http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hinton/b...

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Jean Petitot, École Polytechnique, Paris
9h30 à 12h et 13h30 à 15h00

Atelier ouvert à tous mais réservation obligatoire à Nicole Richard (isc@uqam.ca) Nous luncherons avec le conférencier : prix du lunch $10

Résumé : Les sciences cognitives ont été marquées dans la dernière décennie par le débat entre une approche logique-symbolique et une approche dynamique-connexionniste. Avec ces deux approches, émerge une complémentarité entre deux types de modélisation de la cognition. Cette complémentarité est particulièrement fondamentale pour le problème de la perception tel qu’il est posé par la philosophie, la psychologie et les neurosciences. La phénoménalité perceptive est en effet géométrique alors que le jugement perceptif est logique L’objectif de cet atelier est de présenter sur cet exemple les concepts et les enjeux de ces types de modèles cognitifs.

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Chris Eliasmith, Dept de Philosophie, Dept of Systems Design Engineering, à l’université de Waterloo, Directeur du Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience et Chaire de recherche du Canada en neurosciences théoriques donnera le vendredi 2 octobre à 15h en salle DS-1950 (UQAM, Pavillon DeSèves, métro Berri-UQAM) une conférence intitulée "From neurons to cognition".

Cette conférence aura lieu en anglais et sera suivie d’un cocktail.

Abstract :Cognitive scientists have often embraced the idea that the details of neural processing are relevant for understanding cognitive behaviour. However, the specifics of how to integrate neural and cognitive models has been lacking. In this talk I provide a characterization of how this integration can be achieved. Specifically, I will discuss a neural modelling method, the Neural Engineering Framework (NEF), and demonstrate how to construct large-scale, cognitive models using it. I will argue that such models can provide new ways for cognitive models to contact the rich data of neuroscience. I will also show how these models can answer questions not addressed by typical cognitive models, while remaining informative about the cognitive task of interest.

ATTENTION changement de date et de salle : Le séminaire de niveau des études supérieures sur le thème de l’ingénierie neuronale animé par Chris Eliasmith aura lieu vendredi le 2 octobre à 10h (salle DS-5405). Tous les étudiants gradués, postdoctorants et professeurs intéressés sont invités à réserver une place en contactant Nicole Richard (isc@uqam.ca)

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L’ISC participe à l’organisation de l’édition 2009 de Cognitio, une conférence jeunes chercheurs de grande qualité se tenant chaque année à l’UQAM depuis 2004. Le thème de cette année est l’évolution de la culture et de la cognition.

Nous vous invitons à soumettre une proposition de communication (date limite : 13 mars) ou à assister à ces trois journées (entrée libre), du 4 au 6 juin, qui rassemblent régulièrement une centaine de participants venant de nombreux pays.

Le programme final est disponible

Toutes les informations sont disponibles sur le site de Cognitio

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Randall Engle, du Georgia Institute of Technology donnera le vendredi 3 avril dans l’après-midi une conférence intitulée "Working memory capacity/Executive attention as both a state and a trait variable"

Cette conférence aura lieu en anglais.

Nouvel horaire !

Pour éviter de donner la conférence pendant les activités de grève des professeurs et pendant la conférence de Jerry Fodor, la conférence de Randall Engle aura lieu le vendredi 3 avril à 10h du matin, en salle DS-1950 (UQAM, Pavillon DeSèves, métro Berri-UQAM) . Du café, des jus et des viennoiseries vous attendront pour cette conférence à l’horaire matinal...

Abstract :Early conceptions of cognitive limitations were based on a limited number of items or chunks such as 7 ± 2 or 4 ± 1. However, more recent thinking focuses on abiding individual differences in cognitive control and the role those differences play in other complex cognitive tasks. It is further clear that working memory capacity (WMC) should be thought of as a construct or variable that mediates between many other variables and a wide range of cognitive tasks in which control is required or useful. In a sense, we can think of working memory capacity as both a trait and state variable. Individual differences is one important determinant of working memory capacity but other variables ranging from sleep deprivation to secondary cognitive load to stereotype threat and social pressure will lead to temporary reduction in capability for cognitive control in a wide array of real-world cognitive tasks.

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L’ISC offre pour la nuit de la philosophie une installation explorant les limites de la perception humaine à travers, principalement, les illusions d’optique. L’activité est conçue de façon à attirer le public vers une réflexion sur l’aspect subjectif de la réalité, de manière ludique. Les organisateurs seront présents à 12h, 15h30 et 18h30 pour répondre aux questions et animer les discussions.

Organisateurs : Guillaume Chicoisne, Layiana Ali Ahmed, David-Luc Crépeau

Local : Passage du Rez-de-chaussée du premier étage

Si l’exposition vous a plu, vous pouvez télécharger les affiches formant ce triptyque :

• panneau de gauche : Qu’est-ce que percevoir
• panneau central : La perception et la réalité
• panneau de droite : Les limites de la perception

Le tout est au sous licence creative commons (by, nc, sa)

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Isabelle Peretz, professeure au département de psychologie de l’Université de Montréal, titulaire de la Chaire de recherche du Canada en neurocognition de la musique et co-directeure et fondatrice du laboratoire international de recherche sur cerveau, musique et son (BRAMS) donnera le vendredi 6 mars à 15h en salle DS-1950 (UQAM, Pavillon DeSèves, métro Berri-UQAM) une conférence intitulée : "Modularité de la musique par rapport au langage dans l’étude du chant"

Résumé (la conférence aura lieu en français) : A fundamental question that is currently hotly debated is : What does music share with language ? Focusing on this question leads to an emphasis on the similarities between language and music, sometimes to the point of scientists coming to believe that they are the same functions. However, as I have argued for 20 years, the divergences between music and speech are striking (e.g., Peretz and Morais, 1989 ; Peretz, 2006). These differences have crucial implications for the study of music in general, and its origins in particular.

In this talk, I will expand the modularity position to action rather than to perception. Modularity in perception has been treated in several prior papers (e.g., Peretz, 2001 ; Justus and Hutsler, 2005 ; McDermott and Hauser, 2005). By action, I mean singing and speaking. Here I will review the literature on these two major modes of vocal expression and discuss their respective modularity. First, I will first provide a brief background on the contemporary notion of modularity. Next, I will review the evidence for modularity in speaking and singing as arising from four sources : 1) neuropsychological dissociation ; 2) overlap in neuroimaging ; 3) interference effects ; and 4) domain-transfer effects. Finally, I will contrast the modularity position with the resource-sharing framework proposed by Patel (2003, 2008).

Pour plus d’informations, vous pouvez lire "Music, language and modularity in action", Keynote paper for “Language and music as cognitive systems”edited by P. Rebuschat, Martin Rohrmeier, John Hawkins and Ian Cross. Oxford University Press.

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Adam Albright, du MIT, donnera le vendredi 6 février à 15h en salle DS-1950 (UQAM, Pavillon DeSèves, métro Berri-UQAM) une conférence intitulée : "Sources of phonotactic well-formedness : statistical, phonetic, and phonological biases"

Abstract : Phonotactic probability (i.e., the difference between common vs. uncommon combinations of sounds, such as English `brat’ (high probability) vs. `twerp’ (low probability)) has been shown to influence many types of phonological processing, including word segmentation, recognition, learning, and wordlikeness judgments. In the psycholinguistics literature, phonotactic effects are often modeled as learned statistical knowledge about local co-occurrence probabilities (Bailey and Hahn 2001 ; Vitevitch and Luce 2004). At the same time, characterizing differences between possible and impossible sequences of sounds is also a mainstay of phonological theory. Under one dominant approach (Optimality Theory ; Prince and Smolensky 2004), differences in grammatical well-formedness are attributed to innate constraints on phonological representations. Given the success of statistical models in capturing phonotactic effects, however, it is natural to wonder whether some or all grammaticality judgments may attributed to learned probabilities, without the need for innate constraints (Hayes and Wilson 2008), and even without innate phonological representations or grammar.

In this talk, I discuss several ways in which grammatical structure and constraints may in fact constrain and complement statistical phonotactic knowledge. Based on acceptability ratings of nonce words, I show that a model of phonotactic well-formedness benefits from incorporating structured phonological representations, in the form of phonological features. The results show distinct effects of probabilities stated over "surface" structures (perceptual categories) and "grammatical" structures (phonological features). Furthermore, statistical learning is not enough : speakers prefer some unattested sequences (such as /bn/) over others (such as /bz/) in a way that cannot be fully explained by probabilities over either surface categories or feature combinations. I show that a model which incorporates phonetically motivated biases for certain sequences over others. Finally, it appears that speakers prefer some combinations of rare sequences over others. In particular, words containing two very rare consonant clusters (e.g., ’snalt’) are deemed much worse than we would expect based on the acceptability of the sub-parts. I show that this effect, too, may be modeled as the contribution of a distinct grammatical level of evaluation.

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