Pedagogical agents and Artificial Intelligence

Pedagogical agents, that is, animated, life-like characters in a computer-based learning environment are attracting research in Education. Students learn lessons while interacting with agents designed to apply instructional protocols. In fact, learners can receive from the agent verbal messages tipically provided by humans. In a certain sense, a learner might be able to hold a connection with that agent, just as in a classroom. It is recommended that a pedagogical agent look human-like looking for a peer-to-peer interaction over teacher-to-learner interaction. The value of interaction with equally able peers generates the cooperation of equal partners fostering thinking, intellectual development and even affect. By this, researchers have attempted to simulate this interaction in tutoring systems. For instance, Biswas and colaborators at the Vanderbild University with the project Betty´s brain. Betty is a kind of anthropomorphized learning companion building social relations with the student. A pedagogical agent is not a conventional computer-based approach. Traditional human-computer interaction approaches haven´t studied how to support social interaction. Antropomorphized learning companions are just the possibility for such that exploration. It is obvious that the social interaction with the teachers and the learner´s perception of them play an important role in influencing the motivation and the learner´s efficacy. So the social interaction with learning companions in computer-based environments.

PARO or the therapeutical use of robots

Eight years ago, PARO, a therapeutical robot developed by Takanori Shibata, began to be sold commercially. PARO has the appearance of a seal but also presenting characteristics of human babies. It has been used with dementia patients in Japan, Italy or Germany. In an experimental study, half of the dementia patients that interacted with PARO improved their brain activity. PARO can successfully create affective bonds with people. PARO is the best proof that for humans is easier to interact with robots different from what we experience. Humans feel uncomfortably interacting with mechanical objects very similar or that cannot be distinguished from themselves. Psychology uses toys in therapy and we can create artificial seals and project upon them the feelings that we ascribe to real seals. But being ascribed a property and having it are not the same thing. The uncanny hypothesis holds that when human replicas look and act almost, but not perfectly, like actual human beings, it causes revulsion among human observers. This is an interesting lesson for the development in robotics of the imitation myth because people interact better with a robot that does not provoke expectations of how it should behave.



Duncan Luce (1925-2012): in memoriam

(Powerpoint by Jean-Claude Falmagne in the University of Navarra,

 remembering to Duncan Luce (August, 30, 2012). (Photo by Carlos Pelta)

Duncan Luce died August, 11, 2012, in Irvine (USA). Professor Luce has been one of the most renowned mathematical psychologists in 20th century. Pioneer of the quantitative formalization in Psychology and of the rigorous analysis of the Theory of Measurement, I remember the deep impact of his book Individual choice behavior on my youhtful mind. It was fascinating to see how Luce´s version of the principle of the independence of irrelevant alternatives was exploited in new and surprising directions. Choice probabilities for different sets of alternatives satisfying the principle of independence of irrelevant alternatives might  be consistently defined independently of the actual choice set.

I was lucky to shake hands with Professor Luce in the the "2011 Meeting of the European Mathematical Psychology Group" at  Paris one year ago. Requiescat in pace, Professor Luce.

EMPG 2012: Mathematical Psychology in the University of Navarra

                      (Access the University of Navarra) (Photo by Carlos Pelta)                                                

The annual Meeting of the "European Mathematical Psychology Group" (EMPG 2012) has been held at the University of Navarra (Pamplona, SPAIN), 29-31 August, 2012, and has been a great success. The key of this success has been Professor Christine Choirat, chair of the Meeting, whose excellent organization has been acknowledged by all concerned. Thanks to Professor Choirat and to the colaborators of the Economics Faculty and thanks to the University of Navarra for receiving so favourably this Meeting. The next Meeting will be celebrated in Postdam (Germany).

Between some of the most interesting talks I will emphasize the following:
On Wednesday, Professor Jacqueline J. Meulman  (Leiden University) spoke in a plenary talk about the new approach developed in Leiden called nonlinear multidimensional data analysis. Professor Noventa (University of Padua) presented in colaboration with Professors Stefanutti and Vidotto, an analysis of item response theory and Rasch models based on the most probable distribution method. Professor Budescu (Fordham University) analyzed test-taking behavior showing that penalties for incorrect answers have detrimental effects for both Test-Takers and Test-Makers. Professor Hudry (Telecom ParisTech) showed the NP-hard nature of the computation of a linear order or of a complete preorder under remoteness conditions. Professor Doignon (Brussels) described a geometric interpretation of therelationship between the probability distribution on knowledge states and the derived distribution on response patterns. Professor Núñez-Antón in colaboration with Professors Arostegui and Quintana, talked about the comparation of the outcomes of eight techniques of logistic regression for studying data from depressive patients. Professor García-Pérez (Complutense University of Madrid) proposed a solution for the problem of residual analysis in contingency tables. Professor Carlos Pelta presented his computational system based on agents (PSICO-A) for teaching Psychology and the journey was closed by Professor Farina (Siena) with an experiment about choice reversal in anticipatory feelings.
On Thursday, Rutherford (Keele University) developed a plenary talk about methodological problems concerning to the hypothesis to be tested in Psychology. Professor Colonius (University of Oldenburg) analyzed his Universal Fechnerian Scaling technique, a method for computing subjective distances among stimuli from their pairwise discrimination probabilities. In the afternoon Professors Erber, Goebel and Nan from Vienna, presented their systems for pattern recognition training by using visual feedback to the amputee.
Undoubtely the most emotive presentation of the Meeting was developed by Professor Jean-Claude Falmagne (University of California, Irvine), pioneer of the Mathematical Psychology and founder member of the European Mathematical Psychology Group. Professor Falmagne remembered the contribution and aspects of the life of the late Professor and friend Duncan Luce, one of the most important mathematical psychologists in 20th century.
Professor Alcalá-Quintana described an extension of her indecision model in psychophysics for producing second choices that are consistent with empirical data obtained under a second-choice paradigm without resorting to the increasing-variance assumption. The model uses a proper two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) task with a three response format. Just at that moment Professor Laming (University of Cambridge) established a correlation between the 2AFC paradigm and data corresponding to psychophysics.
On the last day Professor Pigozzi (Paris Dauphine) developed in an interesting plenary talk her application of the labeled deductive systems theory to the psychological aspects of the argumentation. Professor Suck (Universuty of Osnabrück) introduced his investigations about set valued random variables and Professor Induráin (UPN) spoke about results concerning to separability properties relative to semiorders (results obtained in colaboration with Professor Estevan and professors Candeal and Gutiérrez-García). Finally Professors Stefanutti, de Chiusole and Spoto (University of Padua) introduces their ideas on the basic local independence model, a restricted latent class model for probabilistic knowledge structures.

European Mathematical Psychology Group Meeting (EMPG 2012)

Organized by Professor Christine Choirat (Universidad de Navarra), and with a Scientific Committee formed by Professors Bouyssou (France), Colonius (Germany), Doignon (Belgium), Falmagne (France and USA), Hudry (France), García-Pérez (Spain), Marchant (Belgium) and Induráin Eraso (Spain), it will be held at the University of Navarra (Pamplona-Spain), the annual Meeting of the European Mathematical Psychology Group (EMPG-2012), from August 29, 2012 until August 31, 2012.

The plenary speakers will be Professors Meulman (Leiden University), Pigozzi (Paris-Dauphine) and Rutherford (Keele University).

The author of this blog, Carlos Pelta, will attend the Meeting with a talk entitled "PSICO-A: A new computational system for learning Psychology". Below the program is available:

https://sites.google.com/site/empg2012/program

Neurosciences Madrid 2012

Organized by Ramón Areces Foundation and coordinated by Professor José Luis Muñiz Gutiérrez (CIEMAT), a series of lectures will present the outlooks from different disciplines and perspectives about Neuroscience from Wednesday, July 4, 2012 until Tuesday, July 5, 2012. Herein I enclose the program of this Meeting:

Program

Coordinated by:
José Luis Muñiz
Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas (CIEMAT).
Grupo de Física Médica de Real Sociedad Española de Física (RSEF).

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Wednesday, 4

09:30 Opening

Raimundo Pérez-Hernández y Torra
Fundación Ramón Areces.

María del Rosario Heras Celemín
Real Sociedad Española de Física. (RSEF).

José Luis MuñizGrupo de Física Médica de la Real Sociedad Española de Física (RSEF).

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10:00 La neurona de Jennifer Aniston

Rodrigo Quian Quiroga
Department of Engineering. University of Leicester. Reino Unido

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10:40 Estudio de la conectividad funcional en registros de alta densidad: cuando más es menos

Ernesto Pereda
Departamento de Física Básica. Universidad de La Laguna. Tenerife.

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11:20 Redes Complejas y epilepsia del lóbulo temporal. Focalizando fuera del foco la causa de las crisis focales

Guillermo Ortega
Hospital Universitario de La Princesa. Madrid.

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12:00 Break

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12:30 Sueño, conciencia y complejidad

Enzo Tagliazucchi
Goethe-University Frankfurt. Alemania.

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13:10 Visualización microscópica del cerebro desde los tiempos de Cajal hasta nuestros días

Javier de Felipe
Centro de Tecnología Biomédica (CTB). Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.

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13:50 Break

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16:00 Ritmos cerebrales buenos y malos: estudiando la dinámica neuronal normal y epiléptica

Liset Menéndez de la Prida
Instituto Cajal. CSIC. Madrid.

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16:40 La física del "dolce far niente", ¿Qué hace el cerebro cuando no hace nada?

Dante Chialvo
Neurophysiology Laboratory. University of California, Los Angeles. EE.UU.

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17:20 Aplicaciones clínicas de la Imagen Médica en la psiquiatría/salud mental

Celso Arango
CIBERSAM. Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón. Madrid.

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18:00 Discussion

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Tuesday, 5

10:00 Neuroimagen por Resonancia en Enfermedades Neurodegenerativas y Neurológicas

Juan Antonio Hernández Tamames
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.

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10:40 Neuroimagen estructural en adolescentes con psicosis y autismo

Joost JanssenCIBERSAM. Hospital Universitario Gregorio Marañón. Madrid.

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11:20 Interfaces Cerebro-Máquina: aplicaciones básicas y clínicas

José M. Carmena
Brain-Machine Interface Systems Laboratory.
University of California, Berkeley. EE.UU.

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12:00 Break

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12:30 Estudio de la recuperación del daño cerebral mediante MEG

Nazareth P. Castellanos
Laboratory of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience. UCM-UPM. Centre for Biomedical Technology.

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13:30 Inmunología y Sistema Nervioso: conceptos básicos y aspectos clínicos

Juan Antonio García Merino
Hospital Universitario Puerta de Hierro Majadahonda.

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13:50 Break

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16:00 Células Madre neuronales. Caracterización electrofisiológica y desarrollo de una terapia celular para el tratamiento del Ictus Isquémico

Josefina María Vegara Meseguer
Universidad Católica San Antonio de Murcia.

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16:40 Terapia celular en Esclerosis Lateral Amiotrófica: del laboratorio a la clínica

Jonathan Jones*, Mª Carmen Viso, Diego Pastor, Salvador Martínez
(*) Instituto de Neurociencias. Universidad Miguel Hernández. San Juan, Alicante.

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17:20 Nuevas perspectivas en neurorregeneración: terapia celular aplicada a la discapacidad neurológica

Jesús Vaquero
Servicio de Neurocirugía. Hospital Universitario Puerta de Hierro Majadahonda

PoCoMo: playful social interactions between multiple projected characters

PoCoMo (see http://fluid.media.mit.edu/people/roy/media/PoCoMo-cam-ready-optimized.pdf) consists of two mobile projector-camera systems with computer vision algorithms to support the behaviours of characters projected in the environment. The characters are guided by hand movements and can respond to other characters, simulating a reality of life-like agents. Users hold micro projector-camera devices to project animated characters on the wall and the characters recognize and interact with one another. Extracting visual features from the environment, an algorithm enables operations in a limited resource environment. The system creates games including social scenarios of relating and exchange between to co-located users. The characters are programmed to have component parts with separate articulation and with different sequences based on the proximity of the other characters. The projected characters can respond to the presence and the orientation of one another and acknowledge each other. Also they can trigger gestures of friendship such as shaking hands. Characters can leave presents to one another. Each character has an identity that is represented by the color of its markers. A detection algorithm scans the image by applying a threshold extracting the contour of the figures. The detection algorithm has been implemented in C++ and compiled to a native library. The UI of the application has been implemented in JAVA using ANDROID API. In a future work, the authors (Shilkrot, Hunter and Maes from MIT Media Lab) will integrate markers with the projected content and migrate the application to devices with wider fields of views.

Origin of epistemic structures and computational agents

Adding cognitive structures to the world is a basic adaptive strategy. Chandrasekharan and Stewart (2007) developed an interesting perspective modeling swarms of foraging robots for simulating epistemic structures in agents. Epistemic structures could be structures generated for oneself (for instance, bookmarks), structures generated for oneself and others (pheromones, etc.) and structures generated exclusively for others (warning smells...) (see Chandrasekharan and Stewart, 2007, 331). A key feature of such structures is their task-specifity. According to Chandrasekharan and Stewart (art. cit., 332), organisms sometimes generate random structures in the environment and organisms have a bias to reduce physical or cognitive effort. The authors design a computational simulation consisting of an environment of a 30x30 toroidal gridworld, with one 3x3 square patch representing the agent´s home, and another representing the target. This target can be thought of as a food source. An agen can perform several possible actions: moving randomly; to distinguish between their home and their target (consider models of ant foraging and postulate a home pheromone and a food pheromone) and to modify the environment. The agents have four sensors, two external and two internal and are programmed by a genetic algorithm to evolve foraging behavior in the agents. The fitness function of the genetic algorithm is the inverse of the time measure, which is interpreted as an expression of tiredness. In the simulation, 10 agents foraged at the same time. Initially, the agents behaved randomly. Most agents did not find the target. On average, each agent was completing 0.07 foraging trips every 100 time steps. After a few hundred generations, the agents were completing an average of 1.9 trips in that same period. The result confirmed that the agents were able to systematically make use of their ability to sense and generate structures in the world, on an evolutionary time scale. But is possible for the agents adding structures to the world within their lifetimes? The Q-learning (Watkins, 1989) is the simplest method to perform this task. Using the Q-learning algorithm, 10 agents were ran for 1,000 time steps. To indicate tiredness, it was gave them a reinforcement value of -1 while foraging. When they returned home after finding the target, they were given a reinforcement of 0. By the end of the simulation, agents required only around 150 time steps to make a complete trip (a foraging rate of 0.66 trips in 100 time steps, that is, twice as quick as agents without the structure-forming ability). Even they spent 58% of their time generating structures: epistemic structures generation allowed the agents to complete their foraging task down from 300 time steps. These simulations facilitate an integration of the symbolic and situated views of cognition supporting the extended mind thesis.