Kommunizierende Agenten: Gestische und natürlichsprachliche Interaktion

Communicating agents: Gesture and natural language interaction Summary. An important scientific method within cognitive science consists in the synthesis of cognitive abilities, of forms of behavior by developing specific artificial agents. Many current approaches make use of the notion of an agent in order to develop concepts of cognitive behavior on different levels of abstraction. Basic properties of agents are: reactivity, autonomy, goal directed activity, and communication. This contribution examines the communicative aspect, i.e. the interaction by gesture or language and their integration, e.g. in identifying referents. Since we conceive communicating agents as systems able to synthesize such interactions as well as their integration, this will be illustrated with respect to two artificial systems. The GRAVIS system detects objects as well as pointing gestures of an instructor, and the camera agent is able to focus on specific objects. The CoRA system processes situated natural language instructions, and the simulated robot agent is able to integrate the use of language, perception and action. Finally we propose an integration of both approaches. Zusammenfassung. Ein wichtiger Forschungsansatz innerhalb der Kognitionswissenschaft besteht in der Synthese kognitiver Fähigkeiten und Verhaltensweisen durch den Bau geeigneter, künstlicher Systeme. Viele der in jüngerer Zeit verfolgten Ansätze nutzen dabei den Begriff des Agenten, um kognitives Verhalten auf unterschiedlichen Abstraktionsebenen zu konzeptualisieren. Grundeigenschaften von Agenten sind u.a. Reaktivität, Autonomie, Zielgerichtetheit und Kommunikationsfähigkeit. In dem vorliegenden Beitrag interessieren wir uns für die Ebene kommunikativen Verhaltens, bei der Gestik und Sprache zur Vermittlung eines Sachverhaltes zusammenwirken, und verstehen unter einem kommunizierenden Agenten ein System, das für solches Verhalten einen nennenswerten Kompetenzausschnitt realisiert. Wir stellen hierzu beispielhaft zwei Systeme vor. Das System GRAVIS demonstriert die Referenzierung von Objekten im Blickfeld eines Kamerakopfes durch Handzeigegestik eines Instrukteurs. Das System CoRA demonstriert die Verarbeitung sprachlicher Handlungsanweisungen im Kontext der Kooperation mit einem simulierten Roboter. Abschließend wird die Integration der beiden Ansätze diskutiert.     

Individual and developmental differences in working memory across the life span

The effects of secondary tasks on verbal and spatial working memory were examined in multiple child, young adult, and older adult samples. Although memory span increased with age in the child samples and decreased with age in the adult samples, there was little evidence of systematic change in the magnitude of interference effects. Surprisingly, individuals who had larger memory spans when there was no secondary task showed greater interference effects than their age-mates. These findings are inconsistent with the hypothesis that age and individual differences in working memory are due to differences in the ability to inhibit irrelevant information, at least as this hypothesis is currently formulated. Moreover, our results suggest that different mechanisms underlie developmental and individual differences in susceptibility to interference across the life span. A model is proposed in which memory span and processing speed both increase with development but are relatively independent abilities within age groups.     

Perception of dynamic information for vowels in syllable onsets and offsets

It has been demonstrated using the “silent-center” (SC) syllable paradigm that there is sufficient information in syllable onsets and offsets,taken together, to support accurate identification of vowels spoken in both citation-form syllables and syllables spoken in sentence context. Using edited natural speech stimuli, the present study examined the identification of American English vowels when increasing amounts of syllable onsetsalone or syllable offsetsalone were presented in their original sentence context. The stimuli were /d/-vowel-/d/ syllables spoken in a short carrier sentence by a male speaker. Listeners attempted to identify the vowels in experimental conditions that differed in the number of pitch periods presented and whether the pitch periods were from syllable onsets or syllable off-sets. In general, syllable onsets were more informative than syllable offsets, although neither onsets nor offsets alone specified vowel identity as well as onsets and offsets together (SC syllables). Vowels differed widely in ease of identification; the diphthongized long vowels /e/, /ae/, /o/ were especially difficult to identify from syllable offsets. Identification of vowels as “front” or “back” was accurate, even from short samples of the syllable; however, vowel "height" was quite difficult to determine, again, especially from syllable offsets. The results emphasize the perceptual importance of time-varying acoustic parameters, which are the direct consequence of the articulatory dynamics involved in producing syllables.     

Couples coping with cancer: Research issues and recent findings

The diagnosis of cancer in one partner can impose numerous changes for both the individual diagnosed with cancer and his or her healthy spouse. In this article, the literature on spouse social support in the context of cancer is reviewed. The importance of understanding support given and received within a close relationship using an interactional, contextual perspective is emphasized. Examining support-related interactions and understanding the personal characteristics that determine the type and amount of support that providers give and the kind of support individuals prefer, and investigating why significant others respond in supportive or critical ways is important. In addition, the study of support interactions must be placed in the both in the context of a marriage and in the context of a catastrophic life event such as cancer. A longitudinal study of patients with gastrointestinal cancer and their healthy partners was undertaken to examine these issues, and the design of this study is described. General problems conducting research with couples undergoing a severe life stressor as well as specific problems our research group has encountered while setting up a research program in the cancer setting are reviewed.     

On the relationship between empathy and the actor versus observer hypothesis

Subjects listened to a tape recording of a dyadic interaction. It was predicted that the observational set instructions received by the subjects (to empathize with one member of the dyad or not to empathize with this person) would create evaluation effects similar to those created for attributions of responsibility by actor-observer differences: The actor would receive credit for his positive outcome and blame for his negative outcome more when evaluated by nonempathizing observers, and the social environment would receive credit and blame for the actor's outcomes more when evaluated by empathizing observers. The predicted three-way interaction was obtained. Additional results are discussed in terms of previous empathy research.     

Incongruity versus tension relief

Three experiments employing weight-judgment tasks with the method of constant stimuli were conducted to test between incongruity and tension relief hypotheses of humor. In the first two experiments, the difficulty of the initial judgments and the heaviness of the final comparison weight were varied in order to manipulate tension and incongruity, respectively. Incongruity but not tension manipulations affected both facial expressions and ratings of humor. A third experiment varied the subjects' expectations about the heaviness of the final comparison weight, which was assumed to affect incongruity but not tension. The expectancy manipulations affected facial expressions and ratings of humor. The results of all three experiments supported the incongruity hypothesis but not the relief hypothesis of humor.     

Verbal feedback and the feature-positive effect in children

A pair of displays having common elements may be differentiated by the presence of a distinctive feature in one of the displays. When required to discriminate between such displays presented simultaneously, young children more readily learn to confine their responses to the display containing the distinctive feature (feature-positive condition) than to the display which does not contain the distinctive feature (feature-negative condition). The effect of explicit verbal feedback for incorrect choices on the learning of discriminations of this type was examined in 3- to 5-year-old children. In the feature-positive case, explicit feedback for incorrect responses increased the tendency to respond directly to the distinctive feature when responding on the positive display and greatly reduced errors. In the feature-negative case, explicit feedback for incorrect responses increased the tendency to avoid the distinctive feature in favor of a common feature when responding on the negative display. In this case, however, consistent avoidance of the distinctive feature on the negative display was not always followed by the development of consistent choice of the positive display, and errors continued to occur at a high rate throughout training for most subjects. These results reflect the difference in the structure of the feature-positive and feature-negative tasks.     

SOCIAL-SKILLS TRAINING TO MODIFY ABUSIVE VERBAL OUTBURSTS IN ADULTS

Social-skills training was used to modify abusive verbal outbursts displayed by two adult psychiatric patients. Five target behaviors—looking, irrelevant comments, hostile comments, inappropriate requests, and appropriate requests were monitored during role-played situations. Social-skills training, consisting of behavior rehearsal with modelling, focused instructions, and feedback, was introduced in a multiple-baseline design across individuals. Training improved all target behaviors. The improved behavior generalized to: (1) novel scenes role-played with the original respondent, (2) training and novel scenes role-played with a different respondent, and (3) interpersonal situations on the hospital ward.     

Dogmatism,age, and educational level as correlates of feminism for males and females

Male and female subjects completed a dogmatism scale and a feminism scale and provided information about their age, amount of education, and present occupation. The variables correlating with feminism depended upon the sex of the respondent. The more dogmatic individuals of both sexes supported feminism less than the less dogmatic individuals, with the effect being somewhat stronger for the males. The older female supported feminism less than the younger female. Age was unrelated to feminism for the males. The poorly educated female supported feminism less than the better-educated female, but the effect was diminished when dogmatism and age were held constant. Educational level was unrelated to feminism for males. The differences between the sexes are discussed in the context of perceptions of issues and situational ambiguity.The authors would like to thank Joan Joesting for her comments on an earlier version of this paper. Support for the statistical analyses was given by the Maryland State College Information Center.     

The effects of architectural change,individualized instruction,and group contigencies on the academic performance and social behavior of sixth graders

In this study architectural changes, individualized instruction, and group contigencies placed on academic work were applied to the math and language period of an initially disruptive sixth-grade classroom. Within classroom comparisons indicated that individualized instruction with group contingencies sharply increased the academic production of children from all ability levels, significantly improved social behavior, and changed the teacher's mode of instruction and interaction with the children. Individualized instruction alone had lesser effects, while the architectural changes produced no significant changes in the academic or social behavior of the children or in teacher behaviors. Results of the study are discussed in terms of improvement of the intervention procedures, focus on academic programming, and a broadening of the base of behavior modification work.