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Internship Sept 2016 - Feb 2017
Experimenting how humans actively negotiate new linguistic
conventions
Flowers Project-team, Inria Bordeaux [email protected], [email protected]
Description
How do humans agree and negotiate linguistic conventions? This question is at the root of the domain of experi-mental semiotics [2], which will be the context of this internship. Typically, the experiments of this field consist inmaking human subjects play a game where they have to learn how to interact/collaborate through a new unknowncommunication medium (such as abstract symbols). In recent years, such experiments allowed to see how newconventions could be formed and evolve in population of individuals, shading light on the origins and evolution oflanguages [3, 1].
The rules of these interactions are derived from a class of computational models of language formation withina population of communicating agents, the Language Games [8, 3, 4]. We work especially with a simple version ofthose models, called the Naming Game [10, 4], and focus on the influence of active learning/teaching mechanismson the global dynamics [5, 6, 7].
In this internship, the goal will be to design, implement and conduct an experiment with humans, in the form ofa Naming Game. Participants will interact through the mediation of a controlled communication system (through awebsite), to study whether or not they use active learning/teaching strategies to negotiate new linguistic conventions.The experimental setup will be implemented on a crowd-sourcing platform or alternatively as a tablet-based game.
The version of the Naming Game that will be used is already implemented in Python, on the team’s github:https://github.com/flowersteam/naminggamesal
Required skills
• Design of experimental protocols with human-computer interfaces• Interface design (which information is presented to the user and how)• Statistical analysis (choose relevant measures)• Programming in scripting languages (Python, Javascript, ...)• Experience with crowd-sourcing platforms would be an advantage
Location and supervision
This internship will be located in the Flowers team at Inria Bordeaux Sud-Ouest (https://flowers.inria.fr).The Flowers team studies the developmental mechanisms that allow organisms to develop sensorimotor, social andlinguistic skills in a lifelong manner, following an interdisciplanry approach at the cross-roads of artificial intelligence,cognitive science and neuroscience. In particular, the team focuses on the modelling of curiosity-driven learning insensorimotor and language development.
The internship will be supervised by William Schueller and Pierre-Yves Oudeyer. To apply, send an email [email protected] and [email protected].
References[1] Michael C Frank and Noah D Goodman. Predicting pragmatic reasoning in language games. Science, 336(6084):998–998, 2012.
[2] Bruno Galantucci and Simon Garrod. Experimental semiotics: a review. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 5:11, 2011.
[3] Simon Kirby, Tom Griffiths, and Kenny Smith. Iterated learning and the evolution of language. Current opinion in neurobiology,28:108–114, 2014.
[4] Vittorio Loreto, Andrea Baronchelli, Animesh Mukherjee, Andrea Puglisi, and Francesca Tria. Statistical physics of languagedynamics, 2011.
[5] Pierre-Yves Oudeyer and Frederic Delaunay. Developmental exploration in the cultural evolution of lexical conventions. Inproceedings of the 8th international conference on epigenetic robotics : modeling cognitive development in robotic systems, 2008.
[6] William Schueller and Pierre-Yves Oudeyer. Active Learning Strategies and Active Control of Complexity Growth in NamingGames. In proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Development and Learning and on Epigenetic Robotics, pages220–227, 2015.
[7] William Schueller and Pierre-Yves Oudeyer. Active control of complexity growth in naming games: Hearer’s choice. In TheEvolution of Language: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference (EVOLANGX11), 2016.
[8] Luc Steels. Language games for autonomous robots. Intelligent Systems, IEEE, 16(5):16–22, 2001.
[9] Anna-Lisa Vollmer, Jonathan Grizou, Manuel Lopes, Katharina Rohlfing, and Pierre-Yves Oudeyer. Studying the co-constructionof interaction protocols in collaborative tasks with humans. In Development and Learning and Epigenetic Robotics (ICDL-Epirob),2014 Joint IEEE International Conferences on, pages 208–215. IEEE, 2014.
[10] Pieter Wellens. Adaptive Strategies in the Emergence of Lexical Systems, 2012.
Population:N agents
World:M meaningsW words kasof, rimi, karak, potaf
Random pick
Speaker Hearer
=
Success or Failure of Communication
Start Again
Interaction
Vocabulary update
The Naming Game:Evolution towards a global pattern (shared lexicon)
through repeated local interactions
(a) Example of a semiotic experiment: 2 participants commu-nicating through a controlled channel have to agree on a lin-guistic convention, in order to cooperatively build a predefinedstructure. [9]
